The mercury has already touched 43 Degrees in Pune from the last few days. It feels like we have been put inside a pressure cooker and getting cooked on dum. Now I know how the poor ingredients might feel when we cook them in a cooker! 

Now a days we are trying trying our hands at new recipes for summer coolers. One of the coolers which caught my fancy from quite sometime now is the Brazilian lemonade or Limeade. After watching about a trillion videos on it I thought of trying it out. It seemed such a easy peasy recipe - just throw in some lime, condensed milk, sugar and water and you are done! Simple enough recipe which comes together in 10 minutes . But there is a small catch - the characteristic of this lemonade is slightly on the bitter side. So if you don't like bitter taste in your drink,  this is not for you. 

Things you can do to reduce bitterness:

• Many people would show you they just make lime quarters and blend everything with the condensed milk. But that would make your drink very bitter because of the pith. The white part of the lime/ lemon under the skin is called pith and causes bitterness so that has to be removed to reduce the bitter taste.
• Don't blend for too long, pulse and pause on your blender and repeat.
• It has to be consumed fresh, the longer it sits the bitter it becomes

This frothy creamy drink is sweet, tart and mildly bitter at the same time. This drink is definitely not everyone's cup of tea no matter how much the videos try to convince you. So if you want to try out something with complex flavors you may try this out.

Preparation Time : 5 minutes 

Ingredients :

• Lemon - 2, cut into wedges
• Sweetened Condensed Milk (Mithai Mate) - 50 gm
• Sugar - 1/4 cup (adjust as per taste)
• Cold Water - 2 cup
• Ice Cubes 
• Lemon wedges (for garnish)

Procedure :

1. Take out the juice from the lemon wedges in a bowl. Take care that no seeds are there. 

2. Add lemon juice, Cold water and sugar to a blender. Blend it for about 10 seconds on low.

3. Sieve the mixture through a strainer and discard any pulp. 

4.Now transfer the strained liquid into the blender, add the sweetened condensed milk and pulse 2-3 times until frothy.

Pour this drink over a glass full of ice cubes. Garnish with lime wedges and serve immediately 

Other Summer Cooler Recipes:

• Kokam Juice Recipe 
• Mango Banana Smoothie
• Mexican Horchata Recipe
• Mojito Popsicle 
• Beetroot Rose Sorbet 

29 March

Pune is already sweltering at 40 degrees outside. And it is like 37 degrees in shade today and uncomfortably humid by Pune standards. But I am still thankful it is not as bad as Mumbai or Kolkata at this time of the year. I can still brave the whole summer season without an AC or a cooler. But still the fact remains that every year the summer is a little more harsh than the year before and the impact of rapid urbanization is very much visible on our fragile environment. 

For the uninitiated, Solkadi or Solkadhi or Kokum Curry is a refreshing summer drink from Maharashtra's Konkan region. It cools down your body and helps in digestion in addition to working as an appetizer. Though I am in Maharashtra for more than a decade, I had the first taste of this amazing drink after coming to Pune. The first thing that catches your fancy is the light pink color of the drink which makes it look like a strawberry milkshake and you might be deceived in believing that you are about to taste something sweet. But then the aroma of coconut and tempered spices make you curious about what this drink is all about. Eventually when you taste it you find a very interesting savory concoction of the tangy Kokum, sweet coconut milk and a hint of spiciness from chilly and ginger. Solkadi is almost a mandatory part of any fish thali you have at typical thali restaurants here in the city. And it acts as an excellent palate cleanser before you indulge yourself in the spicy fish curry rice. I think the first ever solkadi I had in Pune was at this famous restaurant called Masemari and absolutely loved it at the first sip. I think even more than the seafood I loved the drink.

There is also a  funny incident that happened once related to Solkadi. This was like 5-6 years ago. We used to frequently go out on team lunches from office and explore new eating joints. So one of our Marathi colleagues had suggested this small thali restaurant which served lovely seafood near the Peth area of Pune. Once we placed our orders the first thing we were served was this pink solkadi in small steel glasses. One of our colleagues was a south Indian guy who was a junior and didn't have much experience in Maharashtrian food. So when he was about to take a sip of this drink, the guy beside him tells, "don't drink that" and he obviously asks why so. The guy tells him, "it is a pink drink and it is only meant for ladies, guys cant drink it". He said it with such a serious face that this south Indian colleague believed him without a question and he didn't drink it! We all laughed at this but he didn't budge from his decision and actually we could not make him even taste the drink no matter how much we convinced! I think till date he believes that solkadi is only meant for ladies :D.

But my love for this drink continues and grows stronger. I actually like my solkadi a little sweet which most of the time comes form the natural sweetness of coconut milk itself. But if not, I like to add a little sweetener to balance the overall savory taste. So this time I tried converting them into these delicious popsicles which I could have instead of the store bought ice cream. You can also convert your leftover solkadis into popsicles and enjoy.

Please note that there are many ways to enhance the flavour of this coastal drink, sometimes people temper it with curry leaves or spices as well. But here I have used the very basic recipe of Solkadi for the popsicles.

Checkout other Summer Coolers from my blog:

• Mojito Popsicle
• Beetroot Rose Sorbet
• Persian Saffron Rose Milkshake
• Kokum Juice
• Beetroot Rose Granita
• Spicy Strawberry Ghol

Ingredients for garnish:

• Roasted cumin Powder

Equipment:

• Popsicle Mold
• Mixing Bowl
• Mixer
• Strainer 

Procedure: 

1.  Start by rinsing the dried kokum pods. Then soak them in a cup of hot warm water for about 30 to 45 minutes. 

2. Using your fingers mash the kokum pods in the water to extract the pulp from them. Now pass this mixture through a strainer and preserve the extracted water. Discard the remaining solids in the strainer.

Note: Color will depend on the quality of the Kokum used. It may vary from brownish to pink.

3. Take a blender jar and add chopped ginger, grated fresh coconut, chopped green chili and 1 cup of water. Blitz it to a smooth paste. 

4. Strain this mixture using a fine mesh strainer to get a thick liquid. 

5. Return the leftover pulp in the strainer back to the blender and add another cup of water. Blitz it again to get a smooth paste. Now strain this in the same bowl to get a thinner liquid this time. 

6. Add the kokum water into the bowl and mix everything well

7. Add salt and sugar as per taste.

Note: Coconut milk is already a little sweet, so if you don't want to add more sweetener you can skip the sugar. I like mine a little sweet.

8. Add water if you want a thinner consistency. Your solkadi is ready.

9. Now take the popsicle molds and pour the solkadi. Freeze it for at least 10-12 hours or overnight.

Serve the popsicles with a sprinkle of roasted cumin powder or have it as is.

17 April

 Summertime and frozen desserts go hand in hand. When we were kids we were not aware of fancy names like frozen desserts. It was simple back then - either it was an ice cream if made form milk or it was a popsicle if made from water. In fact in those days the most popular ice lollies didn't come on sticks. It came in long thin tube like packets which we would call Pepsi. 

Pepsi didn't mean the competitor beverage brand of Coke. It was just multi cultured and flavored lollies in plastic pouches sold in ice cream carts on hot summer afternoons. Probably the simplest of concoctions but we kids loved it to the core. Adults would at times try to dissuade us from buying them stating that they were made of unhygienic water and could make us sick. Still it was hard to resist the lure of these frozen pops. 

The other frozen sensation was barf ka gola or Chuski which was shaved ice with lots of syrup and masala. While Pepsi was my favorite, my mom loved these barf ka golas. She would talk about her childhood and how they had grown up eating them in Bhagalpur. I found them too cold and icy as a kid. And especially since I always had a problem of sinus and pharyngitis, I avoided scarfing down all that ice at once.  Pepsis were more my pace and I loved them. Especially the orange flavored ones.

When I came to Mumbai, and I think we had went to visit the Juhu Chowpatty, after many years I tasted barf ka gola. It was of kalakhatta flavour, which is a mixture of tangy and sweet. Icy, sweet, dripping with a cola like syrup and served with a generous squeeze of lemon, the gola tasted out of the world. 

That experience had renewed my love for the ice golas. With time we started getting so many ice lollies by different brands and those pepsi lollies went out of fashion. But all the kids of my generation and before that would definitely still carry some of the fondest summer memories associated with them forever.

Last year I had planned on getting some pop moulds but the lockdown started and all the plans went into a limbo mode, so this year before time I got the popsicle mould and was well armed for summer days. As I wondered what I want to make as my first ever home made lolly, The first flavor that came to my mind was mojito. I am a huge huge fan of Mojito in general, virgin or not. 90 out of 100 times that would be my default order at any restaurant. One, because it tastes awesomely refreshing, and two, most important, you can rarely botch up a mojito! I did have instances where restaurants served the worst mojitos also, but those were very very rare.

For me it’s hard to think of anything more refreshing than a mojito. Lime, mint, sugar, rum together is by default a winning combination. So for my first pops, I decided to freeze it into lollies. The only thing that can be more refreshing than a mojito is a mojito popsicle. And boy was I corrrect! I went a step further in improvisation and sprinkled some chilli powder on the pops. And it turned into one of the super zingy pops I ever had. Check out the recipe below.

Preparation Time : 5 minutes