RogueChef
“It IS all about the TASTE”
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Fruit Flavored Iced Tea
In the south we make the best iced tea you’ll find. Maybe it’s how it’s done, or maybe it is the water in the south, or maybe it’s just that a southern boy has put a lot of TLC into making the tea.
Given I’m in NYC and it’s summer, the humidity is 90% and the temperature is 90, (it reminds me of Houston.) And the best way to cool off is with iced tea, sweet iced tea…
Given that tea has such a gentle flavor, and is a willing participant in any number of fruit mixes, one might add all forms of naturally sweetened fruit syrups to provide the sugar content and that special rogue chef taste twist. So looking at yesterdays post of fruit syrups, one can prepare a wonderfully flavored tea.
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Fruit Syrups for Drinks / Ice Pops / Snow Cones
One of the things that tell me summer has hit Manhattan, is the presence on every other corner of a man with a HUGE saddle shaped block of ice, a ice plane, and bottles of fruit syrup. For the minimal price of a dollar he will scrape out a cup of ice, dump it into a cone cup, and add a drizzle of fruit flavored syrup.
Is it sanitary? Your guess is as good as mine. Is it COLD? Oh, YES!. Is it REFRESHING? YES!. Is it just what you need on a hot humid day after a trip on a subway with no AC? ABSOLUTELY!!!
Now we can do this at home, expect those flavored syrups are kinda hard to come by. So IF we sort out how to make them, we have the keys to all kinds of snow cones, icee’s, fruit spritzers, fruit teas, and possibly a sorbet or so…
Simple syrup is the real heart to the best cold homemade beverages. Once make the syrup, you can add any fruit juice and create your own special summertime drinks.
There are several thicknesses of simple syrup and they have different uses. but for the purpose of this post will work with a thick simple syrup, a ratio of 1 part water to 1 part sugar, and is the basis of cold drinks.
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Iced Coffee
It is the hottest this century. By the environmental monitoring system in the lair 104°F. I am NOT cooking anything, unless cooking involves freezing with lots and lots of ice.
Since it has been so hot I’ve curtailed my caffeine intake, and now am suffering from heat stroke and withdrawal. I must do something about this. Maybe a Cafe au Lait with lots and lost of ice. This really is a simple recipe, heavy on milk to sooth stomachs, and COLD ….
Wikipedia says:
There are several ways of preparing iced coffee. Ordinary hot-brewed coffee can be served cold, although this may result in a bitter-tasting product. Cold brewing relies on time, rather than heat, to transfer the coffee flavor to the water. In order to achieve this, ground coffee is soaked in water for hours and then filtered. This may be done in any container, such as a mason jar or French press, although commercialized cold brewing systems also exist.[1]
In more recent times it has become common for coffee shops to offer ‘iced’ versions of their most popular coffee drinks. The iced latte and iced mocha are the two most common examples of this. A quick way of preparing such drinks is to make a small quantity of strong, hot espresso, dissolving the required sweetener/flavorings in the hot liquid and then pouring this directly into a cup of ice cold milk. This method is particularly common in busier coffee shops where rapid customer turnover is required.
Start with a pot of coffee, brewed strong, or as my father would say, “Black as sin, and Hot as hell.” I’ll take that 10 cups of coffee sweeten to taste and chill it. Then I’ll shake 2 cups of the coffee with 2 cups of milk, 2 cups of ice.
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Summer Cooler – Melon-tini
The 4th of July holiday fast approaching, and while everyone else looks for some way to present tired burgers, and limp dogs, I think I’ll look at other things to present to my readers.
Things that cool, refresh and relax… and how refreshing is a cold, crisp sweet bite of watermelon? Take that taste and strain the juice to condense the flavor, add a bit of vodka for a bite of “relax me”, a touch of sugar and lime to balance the flavor and you have a summertime cooler that is “Absolutely Mahvelous.”
The first thing to be done is to prepare the juice, by taking the red flesh of a watermelon and crushing it and straining through a cheesecloth overnight to separate the pulp from the lovely juice. One can use red fleshed watermelon or yellow fleshed watermelon.
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Frozen Blender Drinks – Daiquiri / Smoothies
A light little refresher / relaxer to cut the heat, and sooth the mind, almost as good as plunge into a vat of ice tea chilled to 34F….
Some might consider these as “girly drinks”…
Ah, WRONGO, BUFFALO BREATH…
The daiquirí was one of the favorite drinks of writer Ernest Hemingway and President John F. Kennedy.
Daiquiri (pronounced /ˈdækəri/, is a family of cocktails whose main ingredients are rum, lime juice, and sugar or other sweetener. There are several versions, but those that gained international fame are the ones made in the El Floridita bar in Havana, Cuba.
Originally the drink was served in a tall glass packed with cracked ice. A teaspoon of sugar was poured over the ice and the juice of one or two limes was squeezed over the sugar. Two or three ounces of rum completed the mixture. The glass was then frosted by stirring with a long-handled spoon. Later the Daiquirí evolved to be mixed in a shaker with the same ingredients but with shaved ice. After a thorough shaking, it was poured into a chilled flute glass. In more recent times it has become a drink blended with cracked ice or (shudder) ice cream.
One can exclude the alcohol from the more modern versions and deliver a “smoothie” or a blended, chilled, sometimes sweetened beverage made from fresh fruit (fruit smoothie). In addition to fruit, many smoothies include crushed ice, frozen fruit, honey or frozen yogurt, although some smoothies are 100% fruit. Some may also contain syrup and ice ingredients.
Besides consider that special person in your life melting when you demonstrate your new found proficiency with that symbol of verile masculinity, the Bar Blender…
Blender Basics
Whether you are creating Smoothies, coffee based drinks, or the classics of frozen margaritas or daiquiris, there are a few basic tips that will help you get the most from your blender.
- Start Slow Start at a low speed and gradually increase speed until you get the consistency you want. If it is too thin add a bit more frozen fuit, if it is too thick add a bit more ice and continue to blend.
- Frozen Fruit Most of the Daiquiri’s / Smoothies have some form of fruit involved. Starting with already frozen fruit will help maintain the temperature and the consistency of your frozen drink.
- Add liquids first Again the success of a frozen drink depends on control of the consistancy, and this means controling the temperature and the formation / reduction of ice crystals. Starting with liquid ingredients, (I suggest cooling them first) will allow you to add frozen ingredients in a manner to control the texture of the final product.
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Banana J*li*s
One of my all time favorite drinks. I just can not pass a stand that makes these without getting one. Lots of bold banana / orange taste, blisteringly cold, with just the right amount of sweetness and creamy, silky smoothness to make it all go down so fast, you want to go back for another..
With there now being too many days of hot sunshine, and too many days of 90 degree heat, this will make a great, refreshing, and cooling drink.
Background
Orange J*li*s, (Sorry, you never can tell when someone will want to get picky about trademarks) is a fruit drink, created by blending orange juice, crushed ice, and a optional mixture of powdered whole milk and egg whites. It has been available since the late 1920s. Now if we take this basic recipe and add banana for a nice taste combo, and add just a touch of really good bourbon for that rougechef twist.
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Lemonade / Limeade
It is still damned hot, and I’ve had a weekend rather heavy with travel. I’m not in the mood to cook a large meal, in fact I’m more in the mood of uncooking. I.E. Preparing simple things that please, and do not require mega-btu’s…
Let’s take a simple summer time drink and make the best possible…
Citrus juice cuts a thirst like nothing else on the planet. (Some might argue beer, but for me citrus.). And every body knows how to make lemonade or limeade … Just squeeze some juice, add sugar and water, and you have lemonade.
WRONG CITRUS BREATH!!!!! Most times this is sickeningly sweet, or mouth puckering tart, or worst of all, just nothing more than slightly flavored water….
The PROPER ratio of ingredients is ~1 cup juice, ~1 cup water, 1 cup Sugar, and then ice and dilute to taste…. Now to make sure we can mix in all the sugar without having a sugar slick on the bottom of the glass, We’ll make a simple syrup…
A basic sugar-and-water syrup used to make drinks at bars is referred to by several names, including simple syrup, sugar syrup, simple sugar syrup, gomme, and bar syrup.
Simple syrup is made by stirring granulated sugar into hot water in a sauce pan until the sugar is dissolved and then cooling the solution. Generally, the ratio of sugar to water can range anywhere from 1:1 to 2:1.
Background
Lemonade is a citrus (lemon) flavored drink, typically made from lemons, water and sugar. With the contrast of sweet and sour, the resulting flavor is quite agreeable to the taste buds.
The term can refer to three different types of beverage:
- “Clear” lemonade: In many western European countries, the term limonade, from which the term “lemonade” is derived, originally applied to unsweetened water or carbonated soda water with lemon juice added, although several versions of sugar sweetened limonade have arrived on store shelves.
- “Cloudy” lemonade: In the U.S., Canada and Pakistan lemonade refers to a mixture of lemon juice, sugar, and tap water, although there are many versions which contain artificial flavors instead of actual lemon juice. In Pakistan, lemonade is a common household preparation, made using freshly squeezed lemons, refined sugar, salt (and other spices per taste) and is best consumed fresh.
- “Fizzy” lemonade: In France, the modern use of the term limonade refers to sweet carbonated lemon soft drinks. Likewise, in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand the term mainly refers to a colourless, carbonated, sweet soft drink containing either natural or artificial lemon flavor, such as Schweppes Lemonade.
- “Pink” lemonade is : simply lemonade that has been dyed with pink coloring and is sometimes made sweeter. Sometimes artificial flavorings are used; natural flavorings can include grenadine, cherry, grape, cranberry, or other juices.
- “Hard” Lemonade : is one of the prior lemonade with some form of alcohol. From champagne in a “fizzy”, to vodka is a “Clear”
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Affogato, Espresso over Home Made Ice Cream
I love deserts, and I always love coffee with my desert, but this from Il Vicolo was absolute simplicity, and a total joy to consume.
This is one restaurant, I will visit when ever I can, preferably for dinner as it does seem to be a mob scene at lunch.
An affogato or Italian for drowned is a coffee-based beverage or dessert. It usually takes the form of a scoop of vanilla gelato or ice cream topped with a shot of hot espresso, for a try roguechef twist I’ll a a shot of Kahlua or Amaretto..
Snap Shots