Lemon Aid

One of my favourite summer drinks has always been homemade lemonade: fresh lemon juice sweetened with sugar syrup and diluted to your own taste. It’s incredibly easy to make, and a million times more tasty and refreshing than the bottled stuff from the supermarket. Plus, once you’ve got the hang of the basic recipe, you can adapt it to make a whole range of fruity beverages.

Sugar syrup

The basis of good lemonade is the mixture of lemon juice and sugar syrup. The syrup I use here is a called a simple syrup, because frankly the ratio of one part sugar to one part water can’t really get much simpler. You just boil it up to dissolve the sugar, and behold! you’ve created the base for just about every fruit drink under the sun.

To flavour your drink, you can mix the syrup with fresh fruit juice, or you can flavour the syrup itself – or both. So, for example, mint syrup combined with lemon juice and diluted makes minted lemonade (recipe below). Don’t stop at mint, though – plenty of herbs make great syrup. There are a few ideas below, but as usual, experiment!

Lemonade

Ingredients

(serves 2)

½ cup lemon juice

½ cup caster sugar

½ cup water

Still or sparkling water to taste

Method

This one is laughably simple. Pop the sugar and water in a pan and bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. As soon as the mixture boils, remove from the heat, transfer to a jug, mix in the lemon juice and allow to cool. Once it’s cold, dilute to taste with still or sparkling water.

Enjoy with plenty of ice, and maybe a sprinkling of summer berries to jazz it up a touch.

Minted Lemonade

Ingredients

(serves 4)

1 cup lemon juice (probably about 6 lemons)

1 cup caster sugar

1 cup water

Several sprigs of fresh mint

Method

Exactly as above, but add the mint in with the sugar and water before you boil it. The syrup will be infused with minty flavour. Just sieve out the mint before you add the lemon juice, and add in some fresh mint leaves to serve.

A few more summery drinks ideas

Coriander syrup: Add a few coriander stalks (not the leaves, as they’re too fragile) to the syrup before you boil it. Strain and combine with lime juice. Freshen up the flavours by adding some of the coriander leaves to the finished drink.

Ginger and lemongrass limeade: Add one stick of lemongrass (bruise first with the blade of a knife) and around a 5cm chunk of peeled, chopped ginger to the syrup. Strain and combine with lime juice.

Orangeade: Just like lemonade, but with oranges. Yum. You might want to include the juice of one or two lemons in there though, as it lifts the flavour. Also try it with rosemary syrup!

Rhubarb-ade: Chop up some rhubarb into smallish, roughly equal pieces and simmer with a 1 tsp sugar and 1 tsp water until it’s really tender but still just about holds together. Drain thoroughly through a fine sieve for a few hours, reserving the juice. Use the pulpy bit in the sieve as compote (it’s great with yoghurt, or creamy desserts like panna cotta and creme brulée). Combine the juice that runs off with a little sugar syrup to taste, then dilute with sparkling water.

Other fruits: The rhubarb technique also works brilliantly with most soft fruit, including strawberries, plums, red- and blackcurrants, gooseberries (the tartness makes a really refreshing drink) and apricots.

Ice lollies: Make your lemonade a little stronger than you usually like it (freezing dulls the flavour), then freeze it in those lolly moulds you get at the supermarket. There are some really stylish lollies to be made here! The ginger and lemongrass limeade above would make a funky frozen palate cleanser between courses...

Pretty ice cubes: Try putting pieces of fruit into the trays with your ice cubes: berries work particularly well, but also edible flowers, mint leaves, or tiny slices of lemon or lime. They’ll seriously jazz up your lemonades.

Finally

What with all the sporting events, this is the summer for parties and gatherings of all kinds. Some well-presented, homemade lemonades will definitely raise your event above the ordinary. Plus (and I mention this merely in passing) flavoured syrups and citrus juices also happen to make for some brilliant cocktails.

You might want to do a little research of your own here to discover your favourites, but once you can make flavoured syrup the world of cocktails gets a whole lot cooler! Pear and rosemary martinis anyone?

Have fun kids, and drink responsibly.

Beef Stroganoff: Learn to Love the Tail

The last of the freezer-emptiers. I’ve had a delicious-looking piece of beef fillet – the tail end – staring at me from my freezer for the last few months. Its time has come.

Beef Fillet

Many people think of beef fillet as a piece of meat that’s too expensive for them and is only for special occasions. And with regular beef fillet, that’s probably the case - for most of us, at least.

However, the tail end (the thinnest end of a whole beef fillet) is a little different. It’s just as tender as the main fillet, but it’s too small to cut into decent steaks, which is what most people like from beef fillet. It’s therefore a bit of a pain for butchers; they can split up the whole fillet and sell it for steaks at a profit, but they’re left with the tail end. The net result is that you can often get it cheaply.

Now, there’s no reason why you can’t just cut up your tail end of fillet into tiny little mini-steaks and cook them as you would a normal fillet steak. Make sure you cut across the grain of the meat – don’t be tempted to cut with the grain to get a bigger steak, as it’ll make the meat seem tougher in your mouth. As a way of getting fillet steak for cheap, the tail isn’t at all bad.

Beef stroganoff

If the idea of teeny-tiny fillet steaks freaks you out (or you want more than one mini-steak in your tummy), beef stroganoff is a fantastic way to go. Rather like a stew or curry, it involves small pieces of beef in a creamy, paprika-flavoured sauce. Because the tender fillet needs so little cooking, it’s a really quick supper as well as being delicious.

Beef stroganoff originated in 19^th-century Russia, but has been much adapted as it became globally popular. It generally includes beef fillet, onions, paprika and sour cream. You can also include mustard (which I did), tomato purée (just add a tablespoonful with the paprika) and mushrooms (I left them out because I hate them, but you can just slice them and sweat with the onions if you like).

This is honestly a lovely dish: not the most photogenic, but yummy enough to make up for it. It’s classically served with crispy straws or matchsticks of potato, but I think it’s great with braised or steamed rice. 

This picture would be much improved if I hadn't run out of parsley...

Ingredients

(Serves 2)

For the Stroganoff:

Tail end of beef fillet

Butter

1 onion, thinly sliced

1 tbsp paprika

1 heaped tsp Dijon mustard

A splash of vegetable oil

A small splash of white wine

2 tbsp sour cream or crѐme fraîche

Juice of ½ lemon

A little chopped parsley

Salt and pepper

For the braised rice:

½ onion, finely chopped

Some butter

2-3 handfuls of rice per person

Enough chicken stock to cover the rice

A bouquet garni (shop-bought is fine, or tie some parsley, thyme and a bay leaf together with string)

Method

First, get the braised rice going. Just sweat half a finely chopped onion in butter, then add the rice and stir to coat it with butter. Pour over enough chicken stock to cover fully, add a bouquet garni, cover with a lid and simmer in the oven at 180°c for 15-20 minutes, or until the rice is cooked and almost all the stock has evaporated. If the stock evaporates too fast, top up with a little water.

While the rice cooks, cut the beef fillet into rounds about 1cm thick. Then slice each round into three or four strips. In searing hot oil, cook the pieces of beef a handful at a time until the outside browns. Bear in mind that because the beef is so tender and so thinly sliced, it will cook – or, indeed, overcook – very quickly. Don’t give it more than two minutes or so, and maybe even less.

Remove the meat, and in the same pan, sweat the onion in plenty of butter until it’s completely soft. Then add the paprika and mustard and cook for another minute or so. Return the beef to the pan and deglaze with the wine. Then stir in the sour cream (it works brilliantly with crѐme fraîche too). Taste and season with the salt, pepper and lemon juice.

Stir a little butter through the rice with a fork and serve with the stroganoff, garnished with a generous sprinkling of chopped parsley. A delicious and convenient supper in 25 minutes!