Rose Hip Iced Tea with Sweet Basil Seeds
February 26th, 2006
A slightly odd looking yet colourful beverage, but also refreshing and from experience a cooling agent on a warm and muggy Sunday. There are three parts to it; loose tea leaves, rose hips and sweet basil seeds. The combination is inspired from a drink my Mother once made one very hot Australian summer when for about a week the family ate copius amounts of watercress salad and drank iced rose hip tea while the news broadcast the first year of terrible bushfires in the Blue Mountains. I remember fishing about the tall glass with a teaspoon trying to get to the jelly like seeds; all bitey and slimey.
Making the Ceylon tea is easy enough - brew and strain. The rose hips which are derived from the rose plant need to be boiled for about 10 - 15 minutes for the flower pod to split and release its healthy attributes. The rose hips I used were dried and took about 15 minutes to open, however you can also purchase rose hip tea bags which are also quite good. The ratio of tea to rose hip is like 1:3 as you want the rose hip flavour to be much stronger. The flavour is tangy and acidic so it can be sweetned with sugar or honey if you like. The sweet basil seeds (which grow into the basil used in Thai dishes) also called casa casa in Sri Lanka can be soaked for a few minutes. I soaked the batch used for the tea overnight, and the next morning there was a mound of jelly like tadpoles sitting in the bowl. After a few minutes swimming in the cooled tea, they seperate and provide a nice texture to the final iced beverage.
Hot Mango Lassi
January 9th, 2006
On the first day of the year our household of two were wide awake after only four hours sleep. Being awake didn’t mean we were buzzing around fulfilling our new years resolutions (more exercise, more writing, more studying), we were tiered and suffering from heat exhaustion at 7:30am.
After a few refreshing glasses of water I set out to make breakfast. The first breakfast of the new year has been fairly important affair in our family homes. My mother usually made kiri bath and served it with it spicy and sweet accompaniments. There would also be a spread of summer fruits, cheeses, pannetone and even a small plate of wrapped up Christmas cake. At The Boy’s family home was often greeted with idli, thosais, coconut chutney and sambar - all popular breakfast dishes in South India.
By 8 am the temperature had reached 35 degrees with reports that it would travel up to 45 degrees by mid afternoon (and the reports; they were true). With this in mind I didn’t feel up to the task of spending much time in the kitchen. So out came a couple of mangoes, a tub of natural yoghurt, some milk, a bottle of rosewater, sugar and ice cubes.
On the first day of the month, we were to breakfast on sweet and chilled mango lassi. I went the traditional route and made a sugar syrup to sweeten the yoghurt-mango mixture and also added some rosewater for extra flavour. You could omit both, however it would then be less of a lassi and more of a shake.
Mango Lassi
2 ripe mangoes
1/2 cup of milk
1 tablespoon of caster sugar
1 cup of water for boiling
1/2 cup of milk
2 teaspoon of rosewater
Make a sugar syrup by adding the sugar to boiling water, stiring until sugar has dissolved. You could add more sugar according to your own sweet threshold. I prefer the sweetness of the fruit over the sugar syrup in fruit based lassi’s. Once dissolved, set aside to cool completely.
Peel and dice mangoes. Using a blender or bamix, pulverize the mangoes until soft texture. Add the milk, and continue mixing, slowly adding the yoghurt until it becomes a relatively thick. Stir in the rosewater and sugar syrup.
Serve with crushed ice in a tall glass, allowing as much slurping as possible.
(Serves 2 - 4)
