Basil Lemonade - A Recipe for Amateur Bloggers

My introduction to the blogging world (well...the good blogging world - Xanga doesn't count, although other good things have come out of that) was through food blogs. Blogs like Smitten Kitchen, Macheesmo, and Culinary Concoctions by Peabody have a way of taking the ordinary (remember cheese-sandwich blogs? This is what I had for lunch today...and this is what I had for lunch yesterday) and giving it the Hollywood treatment. To this day, I'll turn to a food blog for a new recipe over America's Test Kitchen or The Joy of Cooking. Where a cookbook has very little leeway to go off and talk about how you should go about altering recipes when you live in a tiny apartment with an oven that runs a hundred degrees hot, you might find a food blogger (who hopefully has several hundred readers/commenters) who is in exactly your predicament. The best bloggers also have a bit of an artistic eye, and can make beef stew in an old brown dish look like something from El Bulli.

This is just to say, I am not one of those food bloggers. What I am is a warmish Bostonian with a summer afternoon off, gorgeous light coming through the south-facing windows, and quite a lot of basil in the fridge.

Lemonade? Lemonade.

Basil Lemonade Recipe

Before I start, I should add a disclaimer: what I'm making here is not straight-out-of-the-pitcher drinkable. It's more of a lemonade concentrate that you pour into a glass and add water to taste. So take these ratios with a grain of salt and far less sugar than I used.

Ingredients:

8 lemons or limes or some combination thereof

2 cups sugar

2 cups water + extra to taste

2 cups fresh basil 

Helpful equipment:

A sharp kitchen knife

A 2-liter pitcher

A citrus juicer (I have something like this)

Process

1. Start making your simple syrup. Combine 2 cups of water and 2 cups of sugar (or any 1:1 ratio) in a saucepot. Turn the heat up to medium-ish. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Simmer for 5 minutes, then remove from heat. And let cool slightly. 

2. Once the syrup has cooled (not a lot - you should just barely be able to stick a finger in it without burning yourself), bruise the basil lightly and add it to the pot, reserving some for garnish. Let sit while you juice the lemons, or for at least 20 minutes.

3. Cut all of your citrus in half. Squeeze into your serving pitcher.

4. Once your syrup has cooled significantly (room temperature or so), pour it into the pitcher and stir.

5. Fill the rest of the pitcher with water.

Serving:

Pour about 4 oz. of lemonade concentrate into a glass. Add water and ice to taste. Garnish with reserved basil sprigs.

You can follow the recipe above (mentioning again: concentrate, not something you want to chug), or you can do it the way I did it.


Once you've assembled your ingredients, you should realize that you'd like to blog about this later, and that the light is perfect, and you may not get another chance like this for weeks. Get your camera.

Set up in front of the only part of the apartment not covered in books or dishes or small pieces of electronics and carefully frame your shots so both the ugly box fan and the ugly radiator never appear.

 

Start taking pictures of your ingredients, then realize that it's de rigeur to assemble everything first and take a "group shot". Also take a moment to note that the tomato situation in the background has gotten very much out of hand.

Get out your limes and lemons and put them in a pot. Measure out the last two cups of sugar and vow to go to CVS later so your boyfriend won't be sad in the morning when he has no sugar for his coffee. Get out a huge handful of basil that you bought from the store, even though your herb garden has gone wild downstairs. Tell your boyfriend that it's because you want to make basil-something-else later in the week, and you don't want to decimate the basil crop. 

Start taking artsy shots of your food. Pretend you're a food stylist.

You can use all lemons, all limes, or some combination. I tend to favor lemons, so I used a 5:3 ratio (one wouldn't fit nicely in the pot).

Pour your two (!) cups of sugar into a saucepot. Don't try to replace this with artificial sweetener. The result is something very much unlike the lemonade we're making here.

Add two cups of water. (You could be using any 1:1 ratio. Simple syrup keeps for months in the fridge, so make extra if you're so inclined.)

I made an artistic choice not to show you my tiny, tiny kitchen with the stubborn splatters on the wall, so just believe me when I say that I put the pot on the stove and turned the heat up to medium. I also stirred until the sugar dissolved, and let it simmer for five minutes. Then I took it off the heat to cool down slightly.

In the meantime, juice your citrus. Like Alton Brown, I am against unitaskters. HOWEVER. 

• This particular unitasker just about doubles the amount of lemon juice I can get out of a lemon.
• It is less than fun to hand-squeeze sixteen lemon halves.

I justify it by thinking of all the money I'm saving by not buying double the amount of lemons. 

Cut all of your citrus in half. 

Take a picture of the helpful bird that's wandered by.

Now, I have a question for you folks. Wouldn't you think that, lemon juicers being shaped as they are, you'd put the lemon in this way?

So did I. But I was over on Smitten Kitchen the other day, and she had put the lemons (limes, actually) in upside-down, so the rind was facing up, like so:

I tried it both ways, and I have to say that the upside-down way works better to catch the seeds, although you do get a bit more pulp. Which way do you use a lemon juicer?

If you're diligent, you can get about a third of a liter of juice out of eight lemons. Try squeezing each one twice or three times, shifting the rind a bit each time, to get the most juice out of them. I think limes are a bit more juicy "per capita" than lemons, but this recipe is so flexible, it shouldn't matter.

Leave your artfully stacked citrus rinds for the moment, and go back to your pan of simple syrup. You want to catch it before it cools down to room temperature, but after it's done simmering. Luckily, since there's so much sugar in it, this is quite a long window. Your goal is to infuse the syrup with basil flavor without denaturing the alcohols that give it its smell and taste.

Test your syrup to see if it's cooled down enough by putting a small basil leaf in and stirring. If after 30 seconds, the leaf is still mainly bright green, that's a good temperature. If it wilts and turns a dull green or brown, put the pan in the fridge for a few minutes to cool off. 

Add your giant handful of basil to the pan. The more basil you use here, the happier you will be later. (Do save a few sprigs for a garnish - that's not just an aesthetic thing, it's important for the taste, too.) 

Stir and let sit. The longer you let this sit, the more intense the basil flavor will  be. (Also, folks, if you wanted to stop right here, pour all of this in a dish, throw it in the freezer and stir it every hour or so, you'd end up with an unusual and very refreshing basil granita. I won't tell.)

After 20 minutes (or however long you can wait), add about half the syrup into the pitcher. I added the whole darn thing, and it was too sweet, so take it slowly! (Alternative option: add water first and sweeten to taste.) 

Take a moment to note that the differing viscosities between water and simple syrup give this photo a different character than the photo of the water pouring above.

Add water to the top of the pitcher, and you're done!  Leave the basil in there. It'll get better with time.

Notes:

• This is very sweet, very concentrated lemonade. I would cut down on the sugar next time, and I love sweet things.
• Having made this with 8 lemons vs. a mixture of limes and lemons, I'd say that the limes cut the tartness a little bit, although they were juicier. I can't say I have a strong preference either way.
• A 1:1 ratio of concentrate to water makes a pretty darn good drink, although it could be tarter.
• A basil garnish is a must. Smell is the better part of taste, and although you will taste the basil if you let your syrup sit long enough, burying your nose in a sprig of basil as you go to take a drink really hits it home. 
• Folks, if you don't try this with gin, your world will be darker and smaller forever.

Have you tried basil lemonade before? Let me know in the comments!

Gardening Update

Well hello, woefully neglected blog. Can I just say that learning stuff and writing about learning stuff are two totally different things? I have what I call "Birthday Candle Syndrome", which I've just now made up and defined thusly: it is the tendency to equate putting on the finishing touches with completing all of the work that should precede them. Example: you're making a birthday cake, but didn't have time to frost it, but you slap some birthday candles on it anyway, and voila! You're done. The finishing touches are there, so you must be done. You're done, right? So instead of carefully documenting all of my new exploits for the blog and posterity, I'm rushing through to the finished project, because that's always more interesting.

I'm considering a "What I Learned Today" series to try and counteract that. For example, today's entry would include:

1. How to insert a title into an Adobe Premiere sequence.
2. How to (start to) add a SATA port to a ten-year-old Windows XP machine.
3. How to do frame-hold cross fades between separate video clips in Premiere.
4. How to make sure that when you water your potted plants after shamefully forgetting to do so for three days, that the water actually gets absorbed by the soil and doesn't just run over the sides.
5. How to make strawberry mango paletas (ok, this one wasn't today).
6. What ECC memory is. 

Since five of those require screen captures and/or more photos than I'm willing to take, I'll go with the gardening one, maybe a bit embellished. 

Gardening Tips from an Amateur Windowsill Gardener

1. If you've forgotten to water your plants for a few days, don't just dump water in when you actually do go to water them. Dig a little trench in the middle of the pot/planter so the water pools in it before the dry soil starts to absorb it. The top layer of soil can't absorb water that fast, so if you just pour water in, it'll all run down the sides (and into your guinea pig's cage, if you're me). 
2. Don't be afraid of thinning out. Let your seeds sprout, then when it looks like they're not going to die from the tiniest breeze, choose your favorites (pick a number that you'll keep based on how much space you really have), and ruthlessly pluck the rest. Crowded plants don't grow well.
3. Consider an un-manicured look. A windowsill herb garden that's a little overgrown and bushy not only provides more herbs, it looks pretty darn good, too.
4. Remember to pinch back your plants to make them bushier. It feels cruel, but pick off those little leaf sprouts every once in a while, and your plant will pick a new (less dangerous) place to put its new leaves.
5. Seedling pots are just that - for seedlings. Your average vegetable will not enjoy being grown in a 4" pot. (I'm looking at you, alliums!)*
6. Be realistic with yourself regarding how much space you have to grow. My eggplants will wait til next year because I can only handle one indeterminate plant in my apartment at a time.

What are your windowsill gardening tips?

* I will say that my indoor tomato plants (six in the planter that you see above, three - three! - in a 4" seedling pot) are doing just as well or better than the one I have outdoors in a five-gallon bucket. Go figure.

Thumbs: Now Greener Than Ever

When I started this blog, I had the idea that I would never post about the same subject twice in a row. For the last three days, I've tried and tried to come up with a decent topic that didn't have to do with plants. Hindi? Too much work right now. SketchUp? Not really feeling too architecturally creative. Something programming related? Tends to attract snark from my boyfriend, and he makes up a significant percentage of my audience. And, trumping that: I cannot get gardening out of my mind. I want to plant seeds and go absolutely mad with anticipation until they sprout. I want to set up large window boxes to be filled with herbs. I want to plant something that I can make dinner with in three months' time. Then I thought, hell, it's my blog. If I want to go garden-crazy for a week or two, well...I can do that!

I just came back from the gardening center. Oh dear. Cue gratuitous growing-things shots.

Plants absolutely everywhere. It's orchid week, did you know?

I should probably not be allowed in a nursery on a springlike day with a respectable amount of disposable income at hand.

These are not blurry in person, I promise.

A quick aside on these hanging plants: they are called Nepenthes, or pitcher plants, from the family Nepenthaceae (a word on the Latin naming system: Latin is dead. Say it loud, say it proud, and no one will ever know the difference.). They're native to Malaysia, India, and Australia. The "pitcher" portion of the plant is filled with a fluid to trap and/or digest insects that may find their way inside. Interestingly, the fluid is effective even when it's diluted with rainwater, as inevitably happens with this morphology. The name "nepenthe" in Greek means "without grief" and in Greek mythology "is a drug that quells all sorrows with forgetfulness." (source: here)

Possibly my favorite type of plant.

I thought these were daffodils, but now I'm thinking probably narcissus. Whatever they are, I adore them. I should do them more justice next time and take a picture that's actually in focus. If I thought I could get one of these to survive indoors on my desk at work, I would probably have six of them already. Maybe seven.

A little dark, but you get the idea. Plant in a bowl!

This one I like for the interior design aspect of it. I also like the composition of the shot. I could even pretend it took me a few minutes of careful setup, rather than the shoot-from-the-hip phone camera technique that I actually used.

But enough about the nursery, although I could have spent another hour in there browsing. I got these:

From left to right, that is: oregano, basil, marigold, green onion, romaine lettuce,  lettuce salad blend, basil, eggplant, and cherry tomatoes.

I'll leave the seed descriptions there for now, but know that I have much, much more to say on the subject (and of those tomatoes, in particular).

Artsy shot of same.

I also have two tiny flowerpots that I found at Target at Christmastime. They were $1 each in the stocking stuffer section, so I got myself two. As stocking stuffers, naturally.

Not shown: a large bag of potting mix and some fertilizer. They weren't very photogenic.

I have tentative plans in place to start planting things tomorrow. I need to do some research on the heavy-hitters (eggplant, tomato) that I haven't grown before and will eventually be planting outdoors. Those seed packets are all marked up with details like "Start indoors 5-7 weeks before last frost date" (May 3rd here, for interested parties). I need to figure out if I can start them even earlier and just transplant them after that date or if that'll stress the plants for some reason (too little light as seedlings? getting transplanted too late in the growing process?). I am giving no such consideration to the basil, however. I had so much basil last year that I was considering giving away half of my plants.

Tomorrow it'll be spring!

Gardening on a Whim

One of my always-on-the-back-burner project ideas that never really comes to pass is to grow a proper garden. I have dreams of fresh eggplant, fresh tomatoes, and fresh herbs all waiting to be picked, right in my front yard. I guess that in my dream of the idyllic garden, I can waltz through my patch of home-grown vegetables, fruits, and herbs, clipping at will, and eating fresher-than-thou produce all summer long.

Thanks, Wikimedia Commons user Srl!

Obviously, some education is in order.

For starters, I have no yard to speak of (well, I do, but I also have a landlord), so it'll have to be container gardening, probably indoors, although I could potentially co-opt the landing just outside my window, which is really the landing for the third-floor neighbors' stairs. Placement will definitely be an issue. Two points for an indoor garden, though: I have very large, south-facing windows, so sun will not be terribly difficult to come by, and two: I live in hardiness zone 6-ish, so plantng indoors will alleviate some of the "oh god, when's the last frost??" stress.

Secondly, I have never grown a garden. I have had some success with herbs - that is, last year I grew far too many basil plants, a lonely oregano plant, and I have never once gotten a rosemary plant past its third week. My basil made it through the winter indoors (hallelujah!), but I let it flower (bad!) in order to start over this year  (yay!). I would post pictures of the plants I have, but I'm far too lazy to get out of bed. I used Urban Garden Solutions' garden planner-majiggy to pick some plants I think I'd be happy to see in September/October: 

From the top left, in rows: basil, tomatoes, eggplant, flower x (type to be determined), lettuce, tomatoes, green onions, flower y, oregano, edamame, spinach, flower z. 

Obviously I can't go dig up the front lawn and put plants there in that configuration, but I'm planning on buying 12 approximately-1-sq-ft pots and arranging them on the porch (landlord permitting), on the neighbors' landing (neighbors permitting) or inside (boyfriend permitting). I'm also planning on doing plenty of research, because I've grown exactly two of these plants before. My first call will be to my lovely and knowledgeable grandma, green thumb extraordinaire, who has been gardening probably twice as long as I've been alive. 


I complained last night that it took me hours to make eggplant parmesan and roasted asparagus. Now here I am planning dinner for September. Bring it on, garden!