RASPBERRY LEMONADE

If you are meant to make lemonade when life gives you lemons (a recommendation I thoroughly agree with) I promise I could have swamped you all with lemonade this year. This is a recipe I got in California this summer. A sort of 'citron presse' with crushed raspberries. Simple and yet delicious. Totally recommendable.

You need:
- 6 lemons
- 150 ml water
- 250 ml fizzy water
- 5 raspberries per person
- one table spoon of caster sugar per person

Juice the lemons. Add the water and sugar, mix it all well and strain it so that you do not get any pips. Put the raspberries into a tall glass. Crush them with the back of a spoon. Add the sweetened lemon juice. Top it up with the fizzy water. It could not be any simpler.

Like all lemonades (and like life itself)  this tastes better with plenty of sunny weather.

SAN FRANCICO

This is cocktail that we sometimes drank in Spain before we were allowed to drink alcohol. It feels a bit vintage, but it is still very nice. My younger children and their friends love it because though it is just a mixture of juices it looks as party time to them. You need ( for two or three people):

- the juice of an orange
- the juice of half a lemon
- a glass of pineapple juice (if you are in Spain, France or Italy use half a glass of pineapple and half a glass of peach juice, but for some weird reason peach juice is sometimes difficult to find in the UK)
- a quarter of a glass of grenadine
- a teaspoon of sugar
- 2 tablespoons of sugar for decorating the glasses
- ice (optional)
- a slice of orange and a paper umbrella for decoration

Mix the decorating sugar with a couple of teaspoons of grenadine on a flat plate. Dip the rim of the  glasses on it and rotate a little so that the rims get coated with the red sugar (you can replace the grenadine with any food colorant if you prefer other colours for the decoration)

Separately mix all the juices and the sugar. Pour the juice mixture on the glasses. Add the ice if using it. Then add the grenadine and mix a little but not thoroughly so that the colours do not mix completely and you get a bit of a 'degrade' effect. Decorate with the orange (just cut an indentation and put it on the side of the grass) and the umbrella.

-

AGUA DE VALENCIA (VALENCIA'S WATER)

This is for you, not for your children. It is called Agua de Valencia and it is a very typical cocktail from the beautiful city of Valencia, made with the gorgeous oranges that they produce there ( if you have the chance try the oranges 'Lola' - outstanding!) and cava (i.e. a sort of champagne from Cataluna).

I was in Valencia a week ago to participate in an event to promote female conductors organised by Berkelee at the initiative of 'the one and only' Placido Domingo and the great British conductor Alice Farham. It was wonderful to see such an iconic man launching an initiative to promote and unlock female talent.  In the middle of the current backlash on women rights, here is a source optimism: the amount of men who are now speaking up for women and girls. You can see pictures of the event at our instagram miriamgonzalezdurantez

Agua de Valencia is what you drink on a Saturday night when you go out in Valencia. You have to be pretty careful as it is an alcoholic bomb. Last time I drank this at a party, a foreign friend was flabbergasted that she felt drunk when, according to herself, all she had drunk was orange juice!

You need:
- one part of fresh orange juice ( you can do this with normal orange juice if it is for a big party of course)
- one part of cava
- a quarter of a part of vodka
- a quarter of a part of gin
- a spoonful of sugar per bottle of cava

Just stir it all, add a couple of ice cubes and serve.

TIGER NUT MILK

If you have not heard of tiger nuts you better start reading about them because they are the new miracle food (together with goat… yes, really). Luckily they are actually very nice, unlike those horrendous chia seeds (centuries ago Columbus brought from America tonnes of new goods:  tomatoes, pineapples, squash, vanilla, potatoes, cocoa… why do you think he left behind the chia seeds??!!)

Anyway, back to tiger nuts, in the Spanish Levant (Valencia) they have been using tiger nights ('chufas') forever in a drink called horchata, which is to die for in a hot summer day. I actually like the tiger nuts as such and eat them as peanuts. But making them into this horchata milk is a good way to get the children to eat them.

You need:

 - 200 gr of tiger nuts (only way to buy these in the UK as far as I know is to buy them dried through Amazon where you can buy a kilo of tiger nuts for £12.95. If you buy them like this you need to re-hydrate them, for which you need to leave them in water for a whole night. But in Spain and other countries you may find them fresh)
- 800 ml water
- sugar: see how much you like, I try to put as little as possible (none at all or a couple of spoons max, but in Valencia this drink is very sweet, so to make the original recipe you would need around 100 g of sugar)

You just need to mix the three ingredients and blend them well - that is all. Keep it in the fridge. Drink it as such or with a bit of powdered cinnamon sprinkled on top. Or with plenty of ice if you make this in the summer.

QUINCE SYRUP

This is not really a recipe but the leftovers of making 'membrillo' or quince paste (see our recipe http://www.mumandsons.com/2011/10/quince-paste-membrillo.html) which we made last week. The membrillo came out so well this year that I  decided to buy a quince tree (which I am yet to plant)

Do not through away the liquid from boiling the quinces. Just mix it with water (2 parts of quince liquid for 1 of water) add a tablespoon of honey for each litre of liquid (or to taste) and the juice of half a lemon. Boil it all together and let it simmer for 5 minutes. Let it cool down and add some  mint leaves before you drink it. Really nice.

ROSEHIP SYRUP

We picked a lot of rosehips last week and have made syrup with them. It tastes great and it is meant to have a lot of vitamin C as well (provided you can close your eyes to the enormous amount of sugar this has…which is pretty difficult as 'the whole world' is now talking about sugar ... and I agree with 'the whole world' on this)

You need:

- 1 Kg of rosehips
- 1 l of water
- caster sugar
- pectine
- sterilised bottles/jars

Clean the rose hips and boil them in 1 l of water for 25 minutes. Then strain the liquid through a muslin cloth (a paper coffee filter will do as well). Measure the remaining liquid and add 300 g of sugar and 40 ml of pectin for each 500 ml of liquid. Bring back to the boil for 10 minutes and decant in the sterilised jars (see the way to sterilise jars in any of our jam recipes)

PINK LEMONADE

Just follow the recipe of the previous post but use only 85 g of sugar (instead of 100 g) and add a handful of strawberries. Blend of the ingredients and serve with ice.

LEMONADE

We made this because the children wanted to sell it (with cookies) to neighbours and it was a massive hit. You need:

- 6 lemons (cut them in quarters and remove the pith)
- 100 gr sugar
- 1 l water
- one pinch of salt
- a handful of ice

Blend all the ingredients except the ice in a blender (this tastes even better if you mix all the ingredients and let them rest overnight) Strain the lemonade through a colander. Add the ice.
\