Aloe Vera

Continuing my foray into odd soft beverages (see here, here and here), I'd like you to meet Aloe Vera. Aloe, lest you don't know, is a fleshy water-storing plant known as a succulent, and a member of the lily family. As a drink, it's supposed to be great for the skin, and digestion, and it's big in parts of Asia and South America. The bottle above, branded Aloe Vera King, was manufactured by OKF Corp, imported by Korea Foods Co, and bought at a branch of top sushi shack Wasabi. It poured almost clear, with bits of jelly-like fruit pulp floating about in it. The aroma was brilliantly weird - perfumed, fruity, and, er, shampoo-ish. The taste reminded me of lychee, pear and cucumber - slightly sweet, but not sugary, and very quenching.

Coconut Water

Bit of a weird one this, but I've been getting cravings recently for coconut water. It's the clear liquid that comes from young coconuts (as opposed to the richer milk found in mature fruit) and is apparently very good for you - fat-free, low in calories and rich in potassium and electrolytes. In fact, it's so damn healthy it's used as an intravenous hydration fluid in some developing countries where medical saline is unavailable (it's true - Wikipedia says so). Drank chilled, like the glass above, it refreshed parts I hitherto were not sure existed.

The can pictured top was bought in the US, but the other day I was delighted to discover you can get cartons of the stuff in the UK too. Vita Coco - 100% pure coconut water - is said to contain 20 times the amount of potassium found in sports drinks, which is why its described as a "super-hydrator". Believe me, you don't need to commit sport to benefit from its rejuvenating properties.

BUY IT? Vita Coco is available from Waitrose, Holland & Barrett and Whole Foods.

Fruit Infusions

At a fine wedding on a balmy afternoon in Washington DC I stumbled upon a trio of magical infusions dispensed from little taps attached to the kind of jars I imagine doctors once used for pickling. Cucumber & mint; watermelon; and lemon & lime - the iced water inside tasted of fresh fruit, but only gently. The liquid suggested their contents without forcing them down one's throat, as it were. For those lacking jars with taps, I assume a pitcher and a strainer would achieve a similarly restorative effect.

Slurpee

Back in the United States (where else?) I was introduced to one of the strangest drinks I've had in a while (since this one, possibly). The Slurpee, which is only available from 7-Eleven stores, sounds and looks fairly revolting, but for some reason it's just the thing on a scorching afternoon. It consists, as far as I can make out, of sugary-syrup flavouring, crushed ice and carbon dioxide. The fizziness is what makes it different, and good - they're incredibly refreshing once the temperature tips into the 30s. I went for a pina colada (non-alcoholic, clearly) with a splash of root beer (yes, mixing is acceptable). It was still a little too sweet for me, but I like what they were trying to do here.

Sweet Tea

Sweet tea is a favourite of the American South, and this ice cold pint (above) did things I can't even describe. A truly great drink.

Sweet Tea

3 tea bags

1 litre of water

Simple syrup

Put 3 tea bags in 1 litre of water (or thereabouts) and leave it in the fridge overnight to brew cold. To serve, pour tea over ice and add simple syrup to taste.

Says M: "Lemons, limes, and fruit juices are all nice additions if you want to jazz it up, but I like sweet tea in its most basic form."

I like to keep a bottle of pre-made simple syrup in the fridge (one part sugar, one part water, add boiling water to sugar and stir until dissolved). Helpfully, once the jug's empty you can refill it with water, using the same teabags. Just make sure it has long enough to steep. Tastes better when the sun's shining.

Coffee Frappé

Wells Deli

15 The Quay

Wells-next-the-Sea

Norfolk NR23 1AH

Ice, coffee, milk - blended. Coffee frappés are just the thing on a hot day. This one, £2.30 from Wells Deli, came with almond syrup (just a dash or two, mind - I prefer the flavour rather than the sweetness). Creamy and cold, and light, it was down quickly and woke me up gently. If only someone could invent a self-cleaning blender I'd have one for breakfast every day.

Chai Latte

coffee@33

33 Trafalgar Street

Brighton

East Sussex

BN1 4ED

I like to keep a box of chai teabags around, for a gentle cuppa of sweet spice in the mornings, as an apperitif to a mug of strong coffee. The paper cup pictured above, from Brighton's hip caffeine hangout coffee@33, was an altogether more pungent version. Chai (or 'masala chai' to use its proper name - chai being the generic Indian word for tea) is said to contain any combination of cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, star anise, peppercorn and cloves, blended with black tea. I can't say for sure what combination of spices coffee@33 used for its secret chai syrup, but even after the addition of hot milk to latte things up it packed a spicy punch and no mistake. M claimed it was making her throat itch, but for me this milky concoction was chai untethered; a force of nature. I hear they make good coffee too.

Raw Milk

FoodLovers Market
Rupert Street/Winnett Street
Soho
London

*Guest post by Marina*

I've been wanting to try raw milk ever since reading about the controversy over it in the US. Luckily, A and I went to check out a new food market in Soho and there was a stand from Hook & Son serving up half pints of raw milk to try for a quid. I seized the opportunity and received a plastic cup of milk that was much whiter and opaque than the milk I get from the supermarket. To be fair, I usually drink skim milk, which is quite watery when compared to full fat milk, but not only did the raw milk taste creamier, it was also tasted milkier, if that makes any sense. They also had raw milk cream and butter at the stand - I might have to try making my own butter out of their cream some time - I bet it would taste incredible. If you like milk, you should try this stuff - it's concentrated milk goodness.

Oreo Milkshake

Byron
33-35 Wellington Street
London WC2E 7BN

Byron is a growing chain of burger bars that make really good burgers. Fortunately, for this blog, they make a decent drink too. The Oreo milkshake, ice cold and sludge-thick, speaks for itself. The glassful pictured above was around half the total serving (the rest waiting patiently in the metal beaker behind). Try one.

Chilli Hot Chocolate

*Guest post by Marina*

This is quite a fiery drink, though it may be because I used a regular sized red chilli rather than the tiny birds' eye chillies that are in the picture accompanying the recipe. Anyway, it's lovely and warming and rich due to the dark chocolate - I used a Belgian 72% cacao bar. If you're feeling indulgent, I bet using whole milk would add a lot of creaminess to this. Recipe below makes two servings.

Chilli Hot Chocolate

325ml skimmed milk

1 cinnamon stick

1 red chilli, halved and deseeded

12g demerara sugar

50g dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces or grated

Place milk, cinnamon and chilli into a saucepan and heat until simmering. Simmer for a minute, then turn off the heat and let things infuse for five more minutes. Remove the cinnamon and chilli and place milk back over medium heat. Add sugar and chocolate and stir until dissolved. Pour into glasses or mugs and serve.

Lemon Lyman

Keeping a well-stocked supply of fresh citrus is a permanent challenge for cocktailians. Most of the time I seem to run out of lemons or limes at crucial junctures. Then, I might buy half a dozen of each from a market stall only to watch them decay gradually - unsqueezed, unzested and untwisted. Recently, not knowing what to do with a bowl bursting full of rapidly ripening fruit, M decided we should make lemonade. Not the sickly-sweet carbonated stuff you find in the shops, but the real, fresh squeezed American classic. And that's how we came to create the Lemon Lyman (yes, that is a lame West Wing reference. Apologies to those who want them).

Lemon Lyman

30ml (1oz) fresh lemon and lime juice

45ml (1.5oz) simple syrup

90ml (3oz) water

Pour ingredients into a tall glass with ice and stir.

This does what you'd expect it do to: refreshes and cools. Now, every time I'm running a citrus surplus I can juice a few and get mixing. It helps to keep a little pot of made-up simple syrup in the fridge (I prefer two parts sugar dissolved in one part boiling water). Ok, summer, I'm ready now.

French Hot Chocolate

La Charlotte de l'Isle

24 rue Saint Louis en l'Ile

75004 Paris

France

Only a couple of months ago I would have considered warm milk and powder perfectly respectable grounds for a hot chocolate drink. How wrong I was, avid reader, how wrong. My re-education began with my first experience of real hot chocolate (made with real, hot, chocolate) from a Cambridge chocolatier earlier this year. Then, more recently I was taken to La Charlotte de I'sle, a tiny tea shop in Paris which doubles up as a weekly venue for puppet shows. Three of us ordered their luxuriously thick, dark chocolate drink, which came in a beaten-up ceramic pitcher with little shot glasses of water to wash it down. Intense, creamy, and rich, we got through the entire jug like the gluttons we are. Afterwards, having squeezed ourselves out of the shop and into a cold Parisian February, I glanced up and noticed in the near distance the Notre Dame, which in retrospect was quite interesting.

Blush Orange Juice

Occasionally I like to pull out my electric citrus press and press some citruses. Three blush oranges yielded a single glass of sweet red-coloured juice that knocked the socks of the stuff-from-a-carton and set about reviving me from the night before. I suppose any freshly squeezed fruits are better than none, but Waitrose really raised their own bar when they described "the luscious sweetness and distinctive ruby tint" of their "unique" Sicilian oranges grown "in the foothills of Mount Etna". Only one of the three (from a net-bag of four) produced vibrantly ruby-red juice when squeezed; the others were more ordinarily orange, and the overall taste still too tart to achieve "luscious sweetness" lift-off. I blame myself for having eaten the sweetest oranges I have ever tasted - in Texas - a couple of weeks before. When it comes to oranges, sunshine is evidently more important than volcanoes.

Hot Shake

ShakeAway

22 Lion Yard

Cambridge CB2 3NA

Everyone's had a milkshake, plenty have tried a hard shake. But a hot shake? This was a new one on me. I'm quite fond of ShakeAways, with their giant menus of ludicrous combinations (Farley's Rusk and caramel shortbread shake, anyone?). My favourite ingredient is Reese's Cups, which I put down to a formidable Marathon milkshake I had as a teenager, made from peanut butter and ice cream. Walking past a ShakeAway recently, on a day as cold as Greenland, I was confronted with the most provocative pink and yellow sign: "Winter warmers. Hot milkshakes." Which is how I ended up with a piping hot Reese's Cup shake. I think they must have used steamed milk in place of some, if not all, of the ice cream, because this drink was thin. Still tasty, mind: warming and peanutty and salt/sweet. If the weather stays like this for much longer I may have to go back for another one. But as soon as it's warm enough to remove my balaclava it's back to the ice cold thick shakes and no mistake.

Ciocchino Hot Chocolate

Chocolat Chocolat
21 St. Andrews Street
Cambridge CB2 3AX

This tiny paper cup of hot chocolate was intense. I identified it later as Ciocchino "Italian-style" drinking chocolate. Forget cocoa powder and water, this drink was made from real dark chocolate blended with a "light dairy whipping cream alternative" (whatever that is), and was quite something. Indeed, it appealed to me far more than the rest of the shop's chocolates, with their fussy sprinklings and syrupy centres. This liquid chocolate's viscous, creamy texture and warming bitter-sweetness delivered exactly what Ciocchino likes to promise: "pure chocolate pleasure in an espresso-style shot". It also inspired me to consider what else I might mix with melted chocolate. Certainly to be continued...

Vanilla Villain

The Hideout

617 Congress Avenue
Austin
Texas 78701

A brief stop to rest from the cold - and WAKE UP - before new year's celebrations went off demanded caffeine in some form. Being a dedicated experimentalist, I shunned the Americano and turned to a strange concoction called the Vanilla Villain. Described as a cappuccino with vanilla foam, this was simply a shot of expresso, several squirts of vanilla syrup and a giant cloud of dairy foam. But it was strong without being too rich - and nice and light. If this is villainy then 2010 will be okay.

Root Beer

What is root beer? It's weird tasting. Or, as M would have it, "root beery". It says a lot about this non-alcoholic drink, which some claim predates cola, that one of its key ingredients - oil from the bark of the sassafras tree - was banned as a cancer risk in 1960. Shortly afterwards, producers found a way of removing the bad stuff, although these days artificial sassafras flavouring is often used instead, complemented by a range of other flavours and spices. But there's no common recipe.

Barq's (pictured above) is unusual in making its root beer with caffeine, its other ingredients listed as carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel colour, sodium benzoate, citric acid, artificial and natural flavours and the pod-bearing plant acacia. My tasting notes read: "Refreshing, sweet, caramel, liquorice and anise flavours, a medicinal aftertaste. Like Dr Pepper without the cherries."

Barq's has been making this stuff since 1898, and people keep buying it. It's certainly sharp and refreshing, and you can't say that about every drink. But it's still weird.

Coffee (Unlimited)

"Coffee?" I hear you ask, full of doubt. "Since when has a bog-standard cup of ground beans and hot water represented a bloggably Good Drink?" When it costs $2 (£1.20), including unlimited refills from a friendly waiter, and tastes amazing. This one (or three) came from Kerbey Lane Cafe, in Austin, but it might have come from any number of places in the States. I've only ever seen the bottomless coffee cup in London once or twice (including in Borders bookshop, weirdly) and I say it's time Britons started demanding it more often. Right is surely on our side. Until that time a never-ending supply of reasonably priced quality coffee is secured across the capital, perhaps we should strive to support those establishments already doing it the American way.

HELP! Know any places in London offering free coffee refills? Please let me know in the comments!

Matcha Green Tea Blast

Jamba Juice
600 Congress Ave. #G280
Austin
Texas

The scary-looking green stuff in the polystyrene cup, obtained from US fruit smoothie merchant Jamba Juice, was an excruciatingly cold but tasty beverage, made by blending matcha (powdered green tea), soya milk, plain sorbet, non-fat vanilla frozen yoghurt and ice. I got a 16oz serving, the "small" size (costing $4.25 - around 2.60 sterling), but in true American style they were also offering a 32oz cup - that's two pints! Jamba likes to stress the alleged health benefits of the green tea, which also provides a 75mg caffeine lift in each serving, but the Matcha Green Tea Blast tasted more indulgent than worthy. The guy making mine suggested adding banana at home, and I would also have left out the sorbet, which probably made it sweeter than I needed. For me, this drink was badly timed (brainfreeze in December is not necessarily pleasant, even in Texas) but it was good value, and further welcome evidence that the future will be made of frozen yoghurt.

Pear, Apple and Ginger Smoothie

The Table Cafe
83 Southwark Street
London
SE1 0HX

Every now and again, about once every four years, I wish I had a juicer. My inaugural visit to The Table Cafe in Southwark, for a fine brunch, prompted me to return to the appealing possibility of destroying whole apples with the flick of a button. Its pear, apple and ginger smoothie is truly a zinger: sharp and refreshing. A little on the small side for three pounds, but then who knows how many apples, pears and gingers they had to pulp to produce our little glass. If only I had a juicer I could destroy an entire orchard of fruit every morning to create my own limitless supply of life affirming breakfast juice. Until then, there's The Table Cafe.