drinks

For those hot summer days: agua mineral preparada

July 23, 2013 by Lesley Tellez

I have a guest post today from my friend Macarena Hernández. She told me this story while I was hanging out with her in San Antonio recently.

Agua mineral preparada is one of my antojos. They’re very easy to find in the Rio Grande Valley, and along the border, at drive-through stores. Depending on where you go, they’re made differently. Some people put chamoy in them. Others, like at my favorite drive-through in Palmview, Texas, they actually put in stalks of celery, long shreds of carrot and dill pickles — like hamburger dill pickle slices. It’s really good.

On top of that, obviously, they put lemon, chilito (I prefer Tajin) and salt. And on top of the styrofoam cup lid, they put small cubes of jicama with sal, limón y chile, with toothpicks. So you get a little jicama salad on top of your agua mineral preparada. My family, for the most part, loves agua mineral preparada, especially after carne asadas, when we’ve had too much red meat, too much arroz and frijoles. It feels like a good digestive drink.

 When I make it at home, I don’t complicate it for myself. I buy Topo Chico. I’m so partial to Topo Chico because the carbonation levels are just right. (Lesley interjects: IT’S INSANE.) It’s insane. And I don’t think you can have an agua mineral preparada without insane levels of carbonation. I’ve tried it with Perrier or whatever, the American ones, and it just wasn’t an agua mineral preparada. No matter how much limón or salt or chile I put in there it didn’t work.

Everyone likes their agua mineral preparada differently. It really depends on how much limón, sal and chile you can take. Depending on who I’d make it for in my family, the drink could look orange, or it could have just a few speckles of chilito and salt. And then I mix it gently, because I don’t want it to lose any carbonation. I like to drink it with a straw — it just goes down better.

If anyone’s visiting me, this is one thing I have them try. Not everyone likes it. If you don’t like salty, lemony, spicy drinks, you’re not going to like this. My personal favorite raspa is a diablito, which is basically lemon juice, salt and chile, so for me it’s basically a mineral water version of a raspa de chile limón.

[Lesley interjects: I think this tastes like a cross between a limonada and a michelada, without the beer. Or it tastes like these fruit salads that you have in Mexico, with the cucumber and jicama with lime and chile powder. It has that sort of freshness to it.]

Agua Mineral Preparada
Serves 1

Macarena’s notes: For the mineral water, I don’t recommend anything except Topo Chico. (I like Peñafiel, but only as a thirst quencher, not for my agua mineral preparada. And I have tried all kinds — even making this in Europe. They’re too flat. If Topo Chico is reading this, they should send me cases. I do spend a lot of money on Topo Chico mineral water.)

You can find Topo Chico and Tajin in South Texas at almost any HEB. Note that Tajin does have salt in it.

Ice is essential. This drink needs to be cold.

Ingredients

1 cup of ice
Juice of 2 yellow lemons
Juice of 1 good-sized lime (not key lime)
1 6.5 ounce bottle Topo Chico
Tajin (I use about 9 shakes of the Tajin bottle — this might be too much; start with less and taste)
Salt to taste

Optional garnishes:
Jicama cubes
Sliced dill pickles
Thinly sliced carrot sticks
Thin slices of celery
1 or 2 saladitos (dried, salted plums or apricots)

Directions

Fill a pint glass with ice. Add citrus juice. Pour in Topo Chico, and then the Tajin. (If adding saladitos, add at this point, before the salt.) Taste for salt, add to your preference, then add jicama, dill pickles, carrots and celery, if using. Stir gently to preserve the carbonation levels in the drink.

Macarena Hernández, who grew up in La Joya Texas, is a professor at the University of Houston- Victoria and a multimedia journalist.

Pitaya (organ-pipe cactus fruit) agua fresca

June 16, 2012 by Lesley Tellez

For a long time, I thought I didn’t like pitaya. I thought it was the hot-pink fruit with white polka-dotted flesh. They’re gorgeous, but they don’t taste like anything.

Then I started seeing these things popping up at the markets. The vendors said they were pitaya, too, and that they were a cactus fruit from the órgano (organ-pipe) cactus in Jalisco.

I finally tasted one at Mercado San Juan last week. The vendor cleared off the spines with a soft brush and cut the fruit open, revealing a deep ruby red flesh exactly the same color as the nail polish I wear on my toes in winter. (Remind me later to tell you about my Mexican-fruit nail polish-naming idea. Mashed capulín is my second fave color after this.)

With its delicate black sesame-type seeds, the pitaya was even prettier than a red prickly pear fruit. I bought a kilo and decided to make an agua fresca.

A few days later, the pitayas were going bad and starting to give me the evil eye, so I finally blended the fruit with water and sugar, and strained it. Served a pretty pinkish-red glass to my friend Rebecca and she loved it — “a cross between cucumber and watermelon,” she said. (I’m thinking now that some jalapeño-infused simple syrup and tequila might make a kick-ass cocktail.)

Pitayas taste sweeter than a regular prickly-pear tuna fruit, and the flesh is a little more crumbly and moist. If you have other ideas recipe ideas, I’d love to hear them. In the meantime here’s a neat article on other types of edible cactus fruits.

Pitaya Agua Fresca
Makes 10 cups

1 lb. pitayas, spines removed
8 cups water
1/4 cup plus 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar, or sweetening agent of your choice
Juice of 1/2 lime (optional)

Cut the pitayas in half, and then in quarters. The fruit should easily peel back from the skin, if they’re ripe enough. Toss the flesh into the blender jar and discard the peels. Add about four cups water and half the sugar, blend until smooth. Strain into a pitcher and repeat. Taste for lime juice at the end. Refrigerate and serve cold, or over ice.

Strawberry-lima (Mexican sweet lime) agua fresca

April 19, 2012 by Lesley Tellez

A few years ago my friend Jesica and I were shopping at a market, and she pointed out some extra-large limes. “Mira, esa es nuestra lima.” Look, that’s our lime.

She made me taste some — I was a little wary of sticking half a lime in my mouth — and I was amazed. The lima didn’t taste like regular Mexican lime at all. It was like a pear crossed with a sweet orange, with an intense, floral perfume.

From then on, I called lima “nuestra lima” just because I liked how that sounded. I tasted some at the markets when vendors offered (“Quiere lima guerita?”), but I never bought any because I didn’t know what to do with it.

Then, last week, after tasting an especially juicy lima at Mercado San Juan, I thought: what the hell have I been waiting for? I bought a kilo and decided to make agua fresca.

When I got home that night, I squeezed the lima juice and added strawberries and a little sugar.

The result was exactly what I’d imagined in my head: whisperingly sweet with a bite from the berries. And the smell! It could’ve come from a spray bottle. Or a flower bouquet. I served it to my friends Erik and Liz for dinner and Erik said: “This tastes like summer.” Best compliment ever.

My only duda, as they say, is that I don’t know lima’s official scientific name, therefore I don’t know if you can find it outside Mexico. Ricardo Muñoz Zurita’s Mexican Gastronomy Dictionary says they’re citrus aurantifolia, but that doesn’t sound correct, as these limes aren’t tart or acidic. I think they may be citrus limetta. Anyone out there care to comment? Can you find these in the United States, Europe or elsewhere?

In the meantime, if you live in Mexico, please make this agua fresca and sip it outside, preferably at sunset on a weekend night. You can find limas at Mercado San Juan or the Condesa Tuesday tianguis, and I’m sure elsewhere.

Strawberry-Lima Agua Fresca*
*Remember this is the Mexican sweet lime, not the tart limón
Makes 12 cups, which four people can finish in one sitting, because it’s THAT good

Ingredients

1 cup fresh-squeezed lima juice (about eight limas)
12 strawberries, quartered
4 tablespoons sugar
12 cups water

Directions

I actually halve this recipe and make two batches, since my blender only holds 6 cups of water at a time. So place half of the above in the blender and blend until smooth. Strain into pitcher. Repeat with second batch and serve cold or room-temperature.

Homemade pineapple atole

June 20, 2011 by Lesley Tellez

Part of me really did think that since I made pineapple atole before in cooking class, I’d be a whiz on it the second time around.

That wasn’t the case. In my own kitchen, without my classmates looking over my shoulder, I didn’t dissolve my masa very well. I ended up with little hard bits that I had to strain out. I also wasn’t sure how much masa to add, since I’d downsized the original recipe. (My pot held 2 liters of water, instead of the 3 we used in class.) I put in 170 grams of masa and hoped for the best.

But do you know what I learned? Atole is very forgiving. It really doesn’t matter how much masa you put in it, or how much fruit. As long as you dissolve and blend things correctly, it’s all to your own taste.

My own result, at the end of 40 minutes of careful cooking and tasting, was a thick, sweet drink that was just as good as the one I’d made in cooking class. And it tasted much more pineappley, since I’d added in an entire 4-lb. fruit.

Unfortunately all I had to serve it with were freezer-burned tamales. Oh well.

Recipe below.
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How to make ponche, the traditional Mexican Christmas punch

December 13, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

Ponche is a warm tropical-fruit punch. As I mentioned in my previous post — thank you for all the wonderful comments! — it’s traditionally imbibed in Mexico during Christmastime. Vendors sell it at night near the sidewalk Christmas markets. It’s also served with buñuelos during the posadas.

No one seems to know exactly how and why Mexican ponche materialized. In general, historians seem to agree that the punch concept originated in India, where English sailors took a liking to it and brought to Europe. The Spaniards (or the French?) must have carried the tradition to Mexico.

Today, the base of Mexican ponche comprises piloncillo, a dark-brown unrefined cane sugar, mixed with water and cinnamon sticks. To that, you can add pretty much any winter fruits you want: apples, oranges, guavas, tejocotes.

The latter two are key. Tejocotes are small, speckled orange fruits with an apple-pear taste, and their soft flesh turns almost creamy while soaking in the ponche.

Guavas lend just the right amount of tang and citrusy perfume. The smell of guavas cooking with cinnamon and sugar is intoxicating. Someday someone’s going to make a million dollars selling it to Williams-Sonoma as an air freshener.

The ponche workhorses: tejocotes (small orange fruits in front), guavas (left), apples and cinnamon

In addition to the fresh fruit, ponche can contain prunes, raisins, tamarind, walnuts. Some folks add hibiscus flowers, which gives the ponche a pretty burgundy color.

Ponche isn’t an exact science. Everything simmers together until the fruit is tender, and the dried fruits become plump, sugar-swollen nuggets. If you are like me, you will hover over the pan and give yourself a ponche facial, letting that sweet, spicy steam envelope your face.

You can’t see the steam in the picture below, but that’s because I was so smitten once the ponche started to cook that I forgot about my camera, and kept fishing raisins and tamarind pieces out of the pot to eat.

Ponche simmering on the stove

Ponche has a lot of ingredients, but it requires minimal chopping. If you have a helper the whole thing can be on the stove within 20 minutes.

If you like — and we do, in our house — a little nip of brandy, rum or tequila, feel free to add it in. Just make sure to serve the cups with a spoon, so everyone can dig into their boozy (or not) fruits.

Recipe below.
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Agua de tuna (prickly-pear agua fresca) with lime and chia

September 13, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

When I was a baby, my mom used to sing me a song about the moon eating a prickly-pear cactus fruit, and throwing the skins into a lagoon.

Ahí viene la luna
comiendo la tuna
tirando las cáscaras
a la laguna!

(Note: after the word “laguna,” you’re supposed to tickle the baby’s stomach.)

Growing up, I knew the word “tuna” meant prickly-pear cactus fruit. But I had no desire to try them, because the idea of eating a cactus fruit seemed too weird. Even when I started to get more serious about food, I ignored them. Funny what moving to Mexico does — this summer, surrounded by an abundance of tunas because of the rainy season, I realized that I’d misjudged them.

Tunas are some of the juiciest, most naturally sweet fruits around. They have the wet, porous flesh of a watermelon, speckled with tiny hard seeds. In fact, an agua de tuna — the juice of the tuna, mixed with water and sugar — is one of the sweetest aguas frescas. Sometimes the drink can verge on cloying.

Yesterday at the tianguis, I found a vendor who was practically giving his tunas away. His sign said as much:

These tunas cost 12 pesos for two kilos' worth. That's about 4 1/2 pounds for less than $1.

I bought a kilo, peeled…

What tunas look like naked

…and decided to make an agua fresca de tuna that’s less sweet than the ones I’ve tried. Mine would have lime and chia seeds to tone things down. Well, actually, the chia wouldn’t really affect the sweetness factor, but it would add a healthy boost.

The agua turned out even better than I hoped. It was a pretty pistachio color, and the taste was kind of like a melon-lemonade. I drank a glass after finishing up a tennis game (I’m taking classes, so this was my first game ever), and I couldn’t have asked for a more refreshing drink. This agua was way better than Gatorade.

Recipe below.
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Discovering tepache, or the juice of fermented pineapple

September 9, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

I first read about tepache (teh-PAH-chay) in a Mexican cooking magazine a few months ago. It’s a beverage sold widely on the streets, made from pineapple rinds that’ve been left to ferment in water.

I was intimidated to try it — my first thought was, “Is this going to make me sick?” — but a few weeks ago, urged on by a friend who swore it was delicious, I bought some. The plastic baggie at the left cost 5 pesos. (By the way, do you now see what I’m telling you about plastic bags?)

My friend was right: It was cold and sweet, with a vague pineapple taste in the background. It was sunny and hot that day, so it was tough not to swig the whole bag in a few minutes.

When I got home, I figured tepache would be one of those weird Mexican foods that few people know about, like nicuatole, which is also on my mind lately. But no. Googling revealed detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to make tepache on the Chowhound Home Cooking message board, including whether or not you should add beer to speed up fermentation. (The basic recipe calls for leaving pineapple rinds in a pot of water for three days, and then adding sugar and spices.)

Others have posted recipes too. Rachel Laudan’s recipe calls for leaving out the sugar for a more tart tepache, which seems more my style.

So this tepache stuff is super easy. Next time I make a pineapple pie, I’m saving my rinds.