089. Grandma's lemonade (recipe)

Even though summer is over on the calendar, one wants to stretch out the last sunny days. This time I decided to tell you about "grandma's lemonade".
Why grandma's? Because that's exactly how this lemonade was made last century — mixing a syrup of real lemons with plain water.
Want to remember the taste of childhood? Welcome under the cut.

Cooking time ≈ 20 minutes.

Ingredients:

• 6 lemons
• 2 glasses of sugar
• 1 glass of water
• mint
• salt

First peel the zest off two lemons (as thinly as possible — if any white pith is left on it, the lemonade will be bitter) and cut it into thin strips.

Put a pan on the heat, mix the sugar with the water, throw in the zest and boil for five minutes.

Take the pan off the heat, cool and add the mint. When the syrup has cooled completely, put it in the fridge.

Squeeze the juice from the six lemons.

Take the fully chilled syrup out of the fridge, strain it (to get rid of the zest) and mix with the juice. The juice can be strained too, by the way (I did).

The resulting drink can be diluted with water or unsalted sparkling mineral water. The syrup and juice mixture is about a litre, so diluting it "to taste" gives you around three litres of lemonade "like in childhood".

Bon appétit!

p.S

There can be plenty of variations on this simple lemonade, all just as easy. You can mix the lemon juice with other citrus (oranges, grapefruit, lime) in any proportions. When boiling the syrup you can also add a small cinnamon stick (or a pinch of ground cinnamon), a small piece of vanilla pod, or vary the flavour with spicy lime zest.

When serving, decorate the lemonade with a slice of lemon or orange, fresh mint leaves or a sprig of rosemary, whose piney taste adds a kick. And you can make a "lemonade for grown-ups" by adding a little gin to the rosemary, or a drop of any citrus liqueur to the mint.