melonade: not just an anagram
Jul. 14th, 2007 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138...so for a while, I've been saving the scooped-out seeds from cantaloupes for the eventual purpose of trying to make them into horchata. To get dried out really well, they need to be washed free of all the little stringy bits of melon pulp from the middle, but recently it occurred to me that there should still be a fair amount of melony goodness still in there.
On my first attempt, I mashed the entire pulp/seed mass around and around the bottom of a sieve, which yielded a fairly impressive quantity of juice (nearly 1 cup). However, this juice had a certain unpleasant mucilaginousness to its texture and was almost sickly sweet, and I still had to pick a lot of pulp off the seeds.
So this time, after initially mooshing around inside the sieve, I went through several iterations of dumping the pulp/seeds into about a half-cup of water, stirring vigorously, and then pouring it back into the sieve for re-mooshing. Somewhere along the way, I also added 1/4 c. lemon juice and 1/2 c sugar to various washes, following them with plain-water washes to rinse them off.
Eventually, I ended up with a fairly small quantity of fine white fibers to pick the seeds out of, as well as about a quart of melon-colored liquid which is very pleasant chilled down and consumed with ice. Presumably to stretch the melon-ness further, it could be diluted out to a larger total volume, perhaps with proportionate additions of more lemon juice and sugar, although that might shift its character from melonade to melon-flavored lemonade, if you see what I mean.
Meanwhile, my total stash of melon seeds is still rather small. I can see why horchata is now usually made with rice instead (or with almonds for its precursor/cognate beverage, orgeat), but I keep figuring that well, I've *got* these melon seeds whenever we buy melons, so it would be a shame to waste them....
On my first attempt, I mashed the entire pulp/seed mass around and around the bottom of a sieve, which yielded a fairly impressive quantity of juice (nearly 1 cup). However, this juice had a certain unpleasant mucilaginousness to its texture and was almost sickly sweet, and I still had to pick a lot of pulp off the seeds.
So this time, after initially mooshing around inside the sieve, I went through several iterations of dumping the pulp/seeds into about a half-cup of water, stirring vigorously, and then pouring it back into the sieve for re-mooshing. Somewhere along the way, I also added 1/4 c. lemon juice and 1/2 c sugar to various washes, following them with plain-water washes to rinse them off.
Eventually, I ended up with a fairly small quantity of fine white fibers to pick the seeds out of, as well as about a quart of melon-colored liquid which is very pleasant chilled down and consumed with ice. Presumably to stretch the melon-ness further, it could be diluted out to a larger total volume, perhaps with proportionate additions of more lemon juice and sugar, although that might shift its character from melonade to melon-flavored lemonade, if you see what I mean.
Meanwhile, my total stash of melon seeds is still rather small. I can see why horchata is now usually made with rice instead (or with almonds for its precursor/cognate beverage, orgeat), but I keep figuring that well, I've *got* these melon seeds whenever we buy melons, so it would be a shame to waste them....
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no subject
on 2007-07-15 05:47 pm (UTC)