A simple spring juice
Sep. 20th, 2012 03:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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stirredI love summer fruits - berries, peaches, plums. Anything with a stone in the middle. I'm not such a fan of the winter fare. For six months, all our fruit stores carry are apples, bananas, oranges and mandarins. Around September, you start seeing grapes as well, but the stone fruits are never here much before December. And the trouble with all those fruits is, no matter how quickly I try and eat them, they invariably end up with wrinkly skins that put me off any further attempts to enjoy them.
Today I worked out a way to use them up. It has the added bonus of giving my arm muscles a work out. Presenting pulp free juice, using only a traditional blender and the leftover piece of cheesecloth from my misadventures in jam-making (that's for another entry, kids).
YOU WILL NEED
4 mandarins
1/2kg grapes
1/2kg melon (I used watermelon)
Peel your fruit carefully. Ensure all the rind is off the melon, and all the pith is off the mandarin - I found that 'brushing' it with the blade of a small paring knife gets off all but the most stubborn bits, and it's much faster than peeling by hand. Don't worry about the grape skin, it gets blitzed pretty easily and doesn't affect the taste. Citrus and melon rind are both bitter and won't make for a good-tasting juice.
Pick the grapes off their vine and - making sure there's no stalks left - blitz them up in your blender. They should give you a nice liquid base after a minute or so. Add the mandarin segments, blitzing as you go (I added two at a time) and when these look like they've been well incorporated, add the melon segments. Let the whole thing blend for a good two minutes. You might notice a froth forming at the top; this is perfectly fine.
Once the fruit is nicely liquidised, grab yourself a pouring jug and lay the cheesecloth square over it, tucking it down in the centre to form a well. Secure it with an elastic band if you need to, then pour your liquid into it, leaving about half an inch of material clear at the top. Remove the elastic, gather up the sides, and slowly squeeze from the top downwards. (Picture the way you'd milk a cow.) The juice will drip very slowly after a couple of minutes, but continue squeezing, because there's more in there. Work it slowly until there's only a golf-ball sized mound of pulp left in the cheesecloth. Discard this, rinse the cloth if necessary, and repeat for the remaining juice.
Your final yield should be about 3 glasses, so if you're making this for summer, you might like to do a second batch. Yes, it seems like an awful lot of squeezing for a relatively small amount of juice, but it's super clear and a whole lot more enjoyable than drinking all that pulp!
Today I worked out a way to use them up. It has the added bonus of giving my arm muscles a work out. Presenting pulp free juice, using only a traditional blender and the leftover piece of cheesecloth from my misadventures in jam-making (that's for another entry, kids).
YOU WILL NEED
4 mandarins
1/2kg grapes
1/2kg melon (I used watermelon)
Peel your fruit carefully. Ensure all the rind is off the melon, and all the pith is off the mandarin - I found that 'brushing' it with the blade of a small paring knife gets off all but the most stubborn bits, and it's much faster than peeling by hand. Don't worry about the grape skin, it gets blitzed pretty easily and doesn't affect the taste. Citrus and melon rind are both bitter and won't make for a good-tasting juice.
Pick the grapes off their vine and - making sure there's no stalks left - blitz them up in your blender. They should give you a nice liquid base after a minute or so. Add the mandarin segments, blitzing as you go (I added two at a time) and when these look like they've been well incorporated, add the melon segments. Let the whole thing blend for a good two minutes. You might notice a froth forming at the top; this is perfectly fine.
Once the fruit is nicely liquidised, grab yourself a pouring jug and lay the cheesecloth square over it, tucking it down in the centre to form a well. Secure it with an elastic band if you need to, then pour your liquid into it, leaving about half an inch of material clear at the top. Remove the elastic, gather up the sides, and slowly squeeze from the top downwards. (Picture the way you'd milk a cow.) The juice will drip very slowly after a couple of minutes, but continue squeezing, because there's more in there. Work it slowly until there's only a golf-ball sized mound of pulp left in the cheesecloth. Discard this, rinse the cloth if necessary, and repeat for the remaining juice.
Your final yield should be about 3 glasses, so if you're making this for summer, you might like to do a second batch. Yes, it seems like an awful lot of squeezing for a relatively small amount of juice, but it's super clear and a whole lot more enjoyable than drinking all that pulp!