Curryleaves Lemonade

My office has several branches across city. We, relocate from one branch another depending on the project requirements. When I joined there a few years back, I was asked to meet a person at a specific location where the joining formalities were taken care. After my documents were scrutinized, I was asked to come after lunch. I was shown a block which housed the restaurant.

As I was walking towards to it, saw a big queue till the entrance of the block. I guessed, it would be for getting food as it is the peak time for lunch. but I was little hesitant to stand in the queue without knowing the queue is what for. I moved slowly inside and found the queue was for ordering sugarcane juice and lemon soda.

I am not a great fan of carbonated drink but I was tempted to buy a glass of sugarcane juice. Here in Chennai, we can get sugarcane juice from roadside stalls where the vendor squeezes the juice from the cane by passing it through a crusher unmindful of the dust that gets into the machine from the buses and cars that pass by.

The machine that was at the office premises was neatly maintained. It was covered by green colored wooden boards on all the sides leaving just a hole to insert the cane and a pipe to bring out the juice that was pressed from the sugarcane. I went to the bill counter and paid for couple of roti’s and sugarcane juice. After I was done with roti, I went to stand in the queue. My turn quickly came, but the sugarcane juice was all over by that time. I was left with no choice and had to satisfy with a lemon soda. It was the first time I ever tasted a lemon soda.

It was not bad and as I sipped the soda, I saw a banner placed nearby. It listed different types of juices for sale. I found mint and coriander leaves were used widely in many lemon based juices. I wondered why don’t we add curry leaf to any juice and see how the taste would be? The thought process was implemented and the result was even liked by elders back at home. Instead of having a plain lemon juice, it is good to have it with curry leaf – a simple way of having raw curry leaves.

I prepared and clicked this drink as one of the entry to IFBM cocktail contest but after seeing Siri’s post on Curry leaves Mojito, I haven’t posted it to avoid duplicate entry and hence it is coming out now.

Basic Information:

Preparation Time: 10 minutes + cooling time

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

Fresh curry leaves – 1/4 cup, tightly packed, few leaves for garnishing

Lemon juice – 1/4 cup

Granulated sugar – 1/3 cup

Water – 2 – 3 cups

Ice cubes – 1 cup or as required

Method:

1) Dissolve sugar in a cup of water. Boil it to make a sugar syrup. Once done, refrigerate it.

2) Mix lemon juice with sugar syrup. Keep it aside.

3) Grind curry leaves with 1 tablespoon of water. Add it to the lemonade. Mix well and keep refrigerated till you serve.

4) Just before serving, fill halfway the serving glasses with ice cubes and crushed curry leaves.

5) Fill the rest of the glasses with prepared lemonade drink. Serve chill.

Notes:

1) If you are not able to prepare sugar syrup, just mix sugar in water and stir till it dissolves well.

2) Adjust sugar and water according to the sourness of the lemon juice.

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