Thai fruits - tamarind, galangal and green mango

I'm back from my trip home to Hong Kong, but I thought I'd write about the last batch of soda I did while home.

I went to lunch a few days before I left in Kowloon City (the home of the now demolished infamous Kowloon Walled City, featured in movies ranging from the Van Damm vehicle, Blood Sport to Jackie Chan's Crime Story). This former industrial area is now a cosy residential district that has a number of Thai restaurants and grocery stores.  The Thai fruit and vegetables in the small grocery stores often can't be found in regular markets elsewhere in Hong Kong so I took the opportunity to pick up some fruit for experimenting.

Tamarind and galangal:

Tamarind fruit is a sort of legume, with a hard shell with 6-12 pods. The flesh is juicy and quite sour but as the fruit matures the flesh becomes sweeter. Its grown in areas around the tropics from south Asia to Mexico and can be found in everything from agua frescas to jams.

Galangal is a root, related to ginger but tastes very different, originating in Indonesia, and is used commonly in S.E Asian cooking. 

I bought a small bag of tamarind pulp (the exterior pod had been removed) and soaked it in sugar water over night.  I then poured it through a fine filter to get the sweetened tamarind juice.

Grated galangal was added to the tamarind juice, then additional water added (tamarind packs a serious kick so it needs to be diluted) before carbonating in my trusty ISI soda siphon.  

(yet another thirst-quenching drink that my sister is enjoying!)

Green mango and chili

I also picked up a couple of green, unripe mangoes - tart, crispy and refreshing, they're common in Thai salads, very different from the sweet, succulent flesh of ripe yellow mangoes. 

I diced a small Thai chili, cooked it in sugar water solution for about 15 minutes, then added it to the juice of two green mangos. One chili pepper gave it just the right amount of a kick in the back of your throat. 

Japanese inspired beverages - shiso, limes and water melon

I recently got back from a short holiday to Kyoto and Osaka with my family. It was the end of peach season there but I was still lucky enough to have one of their incredibly delectable, juicy and very expensive peaches. Unfortunately they're very hard to ship so I wasn't able to bring one back to Hong Kong.

I did discover the joys of the simple Japanese lime. Smaller and thinner skinned than a Mexican or even a Thai lime, the flavor is quite distinct. Shiso is also a very familiar sight in the markets there - a member of the mint family, its leaves are large and relatively round. I decided to try making a simple shiso & lime carbonated juice, cold-steeping the shiso leaves in the sweetened lime juice, then carbonating.

The result was a very satisfying and fragrant drink - perfect for the hot summer weather.

I thought I'd give a watermelon drink a go, especially since watermelons are plentiful right now (and they're small miniaturized versions too for easy storage).

Half of this watermelon was juiced, then the shiso was muddled and cold-steeped in the juice overnight, before being sweetened with bit of simple syrup.

My satisfied sister, Sarah (otherwise known as our PR help, Lulu). 

Hong Kong carbonated juices (guavas, rose apples and starfruit!)

I'm posting from Hong Kong this week (Tony will still be doing the Flea this coming Saturday with West Indies inspired flavours). I grew up eating a variety of fruit that I often still don't know the English names for, and often miss the tropical fruits.  In addition, Hong Kong has plentiful juice stands and delicious fruit based drinks that help the population of 7 million beat the long summer heat.

First up: Guava and black pepper!  Tony was amazed to discover last winter when he visited that the guavas in S.E. Asia taste radically different from what he grew up eating.  They're smaller and have a more delicate, less earthy taste.  I bought some local guavas that are even smaller than the Thai guavas, and smelled absolutely amazing.

They were put through the juicer, cold steeped with black pepper then carbonated, resulting in a light refreshing drink with a nice, very slight pepper-tingle at the end.

Next up: starfruit and rose apple.  Starfruit come into season early autumn, so I was a tad early but they were starting to show up at the markets. Beautiful and crisp tasting.

Best way to eat them is to slice off the outer rind on the 'points' of the star, then slice the fruit into cross sections.

The flavor is so light and crisp that I didn't want to distract from it too much with a spice or herb, so started thinking about other fruits that it would go well with.

One of Tony's favourite discoveries this past January in Hong Kong was the rose apple.
Rose apples have a superb crunch and texture to them, but very little tartness. I thought I'd pair the two - even though they're both quite light in taste their flavour profiles are different enough to make a complex juice.

Unfortunately most of these fruits are quite expensive in the US, so I doubt I'll be able to scale them up when I'm back in New York, but on a small scale, they were a fun experiment.

One that I think we can replicate on a larger scale is salty lemon and ginger.  Salty lemonade pops again regularly on the menus of cha-chaan-tengs, Hong Kong diners, and its made using preserved salty lemons put into 7-Up or Sprite.  I thought I'd do a Brooklyn Soda Works version using salty lemons I picked up from a small market stall in one of the outdoor markets, hand made by a friendly woman who's name and location of the stall I've forgotten...

The lemons aren't overly salty - roughly a quarter of a lemon per serving, so I used 4 quarter wedges for a liter, boiling it in water for ten minutes, then added in the raw ginger juice.

The result: tart, refreshing and not too salty.

That's it from me in Hong Kong.  And if you're in Brooklyn this Labor Day weekend, go check out Tony's lovingly created Caribbean inspired drinks on Saturday!

Labor Day Weekend = Caribbean soda time!

In honor of the West Indies day parade, we'll be bringing strictly island flavors for all the Caribbean people! (or any and all island dwelling, or island loving people)  The West Indies = the islands in the Caribbean.  The name derives from Columbus, who thought he was on the west side of India when he arrived.  The history of the region is fascinating and tumultuous, heavily shaped by colonialism and the slave trade, but that's a whole other topic for another time, we're here to talk about fruit!  Caroline is from Hong Kong and I'm half Puerto Rican (a part of the West Indies of course). Both are tropical islands that love their fruit, so tropical flavors are especially fun for us.  Please come out and taste!

The flavors at the Brooklyn Flea this Saturday will be-

Sorrel

Ginger and Lime

Cherimoya (sweetsop)

more about the flavors after the page break...

Plum and Raspberry flavors for Saturday!

The flavors this week will be-
Vanier Plum with a hint of Rosemary
Raspberry and Ginger

Both the plums and the rasperries are from red jacket orchards and both were excellent but the fall raspberries in particular were fantastic, pick some up if you see them at any farm markets!

The back of the car after my early morning farm market run. 

Plums & blackberries for this Saturday. And a Pie in the Park benefit on Sunday

It's become hard to figure out what fruit to use - everything looks so great at the greenmarkets.
This week we've decided to go for yellow plums from Red Jacket, and have paired it up with our beloved ginger.

So succulent and juicy...

And blackberries are in season too - we get ours from Phillips Farm in south NJ. We'll be debuting our blackberry cream soda this Friday. 

In other news, I attempted a sweet corn and basil soda last week. Corn was everywhere when I was in N. Carolina and its just starting to come into season up here. Still need to figure out how to balance out the flavors, but hopefully a sweetcorn flavor will make its appearance at some point.  Sweetcorn is used frequently in south-east Asian desserts, often in conjunction with coconut or tapioca.  Check out this recipe for ice kacang, a Malaysian shaved ice dessert.

This week we can be found at our usual spot at the Brooklyn Flea (right next to Porchetta and Good Batch). In addition our yellow plum & ginger will be available at the worthy Pie in the Park event in Prospect Park, organized by Lauren Cucinotta.  All proceeds will go towards our other Flea neighbors, Scratchbread who are running their own Kickstarter campaign to secure their own retail space (keeping our fingers crossed as their retail location is a couple of blocks from our apartment)

Dates and events for August

Just a quick post to say we will not be at the Flea this Saturday (August 7th) but we will be back in force for the rest of August, including selling at L Magazine's Summerscreen in Williamsburg on Wed August 11th for their screening of Point Break!

Ranked #1! thanks Adam Platt. And we will be at the Flea this Saturday

It's been an exciting week - we found out that the chief restaurant critic for New York magazine ranked us #1 in his taste test of eight local New York soda's!

And yes, we will be there this coming Saturday (july 31st) with the watermelon, tarragon and lemon flavor, and another one that we're still cooking up.

So thanks again to everyone who's supported us through our mad-cap adventure. What started as an attempt to brew ginger beer last winter has become quite a project, and we're constantly amazed at the response we've received!

2 new flavors: red currant & cardamom, plus a Thai inspired one!

Sorry for all the regulars who looked for our booth last Saturday at the Flea; we were taking a break in Asheville North Carolina, eating up some grits and enjoying rafting down the Nolichucky River.

Tony's back this week with two new flavors:
- Red currant and cardamom
- Lime, cilantro, mint and chile (inspired by our favorite Thai restaurant, Sripraphai in Queens)

And to clarify, this July we are only at the Flea every other week, so we will not be there next week. We hope to be back in force later on in summer.

One more thing, if you're in Asheville and want to check out a great local restaurant, try Early Girl Eatery for brunch  (see photo above!) and the tasting menu at Table is a good deal for dinner.

Watermelon flavors and according to Time Out we're a rising star!

Posting remotely right now (I'm in North Carolina, the furthest south I've ever been and enjoying peach season).

Tony's been a busy cooking up new flavors, including watermelon, cilantro, jalapeno and lime (our apologies to all the cilantro haters out there, but too bad, we love the stuff); and a watermelon tarragon and lemon which he ended up taking to the Flea and the very successful Rooftop films & Kickstarter evening last week. It looks like its going to be a scorcher of a summer, so here's to more mouth watering beverages.

And thanks to Rachel Wharton from Time Out and Edible Brooklyn for naming us one of the Rising Stars of the food markets in NY! http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/restaurants-bars/87146/food-markets-rising-stars