Watermelon Breeze-Summer Soother

Every season has its own charm and even though Summers have been dreadful this time, there are few good things about it like the arrival of watermelon and mangoes amongst other fruits and vegetables.

This year I had a special yearning to try out Summer Coolers and decided to do an Instagram series on the same. You may check it out here. 

I have made a list of many other Summer coolers but ain't sure how many I will be able to try. 

The watermelon breeze needed to be tried for sure since I  first had in a restaurant called Hakuna Matata on Park Street. It was such an amazing drink, such a soother and yummy cooler. It hardly takes 5 minutes to assemble it and is so fresh and healthy. 

Soother yourself this Summers with this simple, healthy and refreshing drink. 

Ingredients :

• 1 cup Coconut water
• 2 cups Watermelon chunks, deseeded
• mint leaves

Procedure : 

Take watermelon chunks in a blender and blend well.

Add coconut water and blend again.

Pour in glass of your choice and chill it in the refrigerator.

Sprinkle with mint leaves and serve.

Bel Sherbet

I have never been a fan of experimenting with beverages hot or cold. In Summers I love my ready made sherbets and find comfort in adding them to my glass of water. The maximum I go is making a glass of lemonade. So you get the picture, it has never been beyond all that. No wonder I have almost no recipes under that section in my blog.

But this year, something happened and I do not know what but I am suddenly super interested in Summer coolers. I have been making a new one every day and am so enjoying it that I decided to do an Instagram series on the same. You may check by clicking on this link .

Frankly speaking, I have never liked the Bel sherbet much. I remember my Chachaji who I have always fondly called 'Uncleji' used to bring this fruit every Summers and make the sherbet at home. I must have tasted it but never liked it. As we grow old, a lot of things change. Our perspectives, our ideas, our tastes, they all keep evolving and so perhaps I had the desire to experiment with it. Both Vishal and me enjoyed the prominent woody flavor of the sherbet. While Vishal hates any salt in his juices/sherbet, I enjoyed mine with a sprinkle of rock salt.


Ingredients :

• 1 Bel/bael/wood apple
• 1 cup water or more
• 1-2 tbsp sugar (adjust according to the sweetness of the fruit)
• rock salt, optional

Procedure :
Crack open the hard shell of the bel fruit.
Scoop out the inside with a spoon and take it out in a bowl.
Put some water in it and let it sit or 5-10 minutes.
Squeeze the pulp with your hands or a spoon.
Strain the mixture.
Add sugar and adjust water, adding more if required.
Add rock salt and stir well.
Chill it before serving.

Happy Bel sherbet relishing

Amrita

Gond Katira(गोंद कटीरा) -Summer Cooler

Summers have hit us with a big bang. Calcutta has never seen such scorching Summers with temperature soaring to 40 degrees almost everyday. Schools have changed their timings so that little ones do not have to bear the brunt of the harsh Summer wave. We are constantly hydrating ourselves with water and sherbets. AC has become inevitable and we are trying to spend maximum time indoors.

The Summers of my childhood wasn't so unbearable. Summers meant extra bath times, eating ice creams everyday, drinking water from the earthen ware called the  तौड़ा in Punjabi, stealing ice from the freezer, wearing those white malmal super soft frocks and  the one that I fondly remember-lying under the fan with mom's wet dupatta on top (coz we did not have or require AC then) The air that would pass the wet dupatta would become little cold and soothe us. Summers also meant travelling to Punjab for vacations where the heat was much more  and enjoying the cooler culture there. How I would love the smell of the wet khuskhus sheet behind the coolers.

Summers have changed now or perhaps we have become less tolerant. We are getting used to depending too much on gadgets and technology and forgetting the nature's way of dealing with things. Too much tampering with the nature is causing the present environmental crisis all over. We can only hope and pray that we are able to control it before it is all lost.

 

Coming back to Summers, this time I have been extra interested in the drinks that cool us. Come to think of it, every region has their specific drink to beat the heat. Punjab is a state which bears extreme Summers and Winters and therefore has food specific to beat it . For Summers, we have the Lassi's, both salty and sweet and an interesting drink called Gond Katira. In English it is called Tragacanth Gum which is basically a natural gum obtained from the dried sap of several species of Middle Eastern legumes. It has both cooling and heat producing properties to the body. When soaked in water, it is an excellent coolant whereas when fried in oil, it has heat producing characteristics. It is used extensively in Panjiri which is given to women post delivery for internal healing. In Summers it is soaked in water overnight which swells to three times its volume and is then used as a drink to cool down the body.



 

Ingredients : For individual serving

• 1 tsp Gond katira/ Tragacanth gum 
• a glass of chilled milk
• 1-2 tbsp rose syrup
• Sugar as required(optional)

Procedure : 

Soak gond katira in water overnight.

It will swell up to almost three times.

Wash it well with water and strain it. You may keep it in fridge till further use.

Take rose syrup in a non stick pan and reduce it on low flame for few minutes till it gets thick.
Dip the rim of the glass of choice on the thickened rose syrup.
Swirl the remaining rose syrup inside the glass on the edges all around.

Take 2 tbsp of soaked gond katira in the glass and pour cold milk over it.
Sugar can be added to the milk before pouring, in case you want it sweeter otherwise the sweetness from the rose syrup should be enough.
Garnish with some chopped rose petals.
Serve chilled.

Happy Summer beating with Coolers

Amrita