Calamansi Juice

the soft drink of the Philippines: the small green mandarin-lime squeezed and steeped with sugar into a syrup, let down with cold water over ice, and drunk through the heat of the day

Origin: Philippines

From the journey of Lime.

The calamansi is the Philippine citrus, a cross between a mandarin and a kumquat that arose in the archipelago and grows in practically every back garden in the country, bearing fruit the size of a large marble, green outside and orange within, all the year round. English has called it the Philippine lime for two centuries because that is the office it fills: it is the acid squeezed over grilled fish and noodles and fried rice, mixed with soy into the universal dipping sauce toyomansi, and stirred into every kind of soup. But its most affectionate use is as a drink. Calamansi juice, sweetened and served over ice, is what a Filipino household offers a visitor, what is sold in a plastic bag with a straw at every roadside, and what is drunk at merienda in the heavy middle of the afternoon; it is the country's own soft drink, and its flavour, sour like a lime but with a warm resinous mandarin perfume behind the acid, is unlike any commercial cordial. It is also the standing domestic remedy for a cough, taken hot with honey, and the fruit is rubbed on the skin and used to lift stains from cloth, so that a Filipino kitchen is very rarely without a bowl of it.

Ingredients

Syrup

  • 40 whole calamansi (about 250 ml juice)
  • 200 g caster sugar
  • 200 ml water
  • 1 pinch fine sea salt

To Serve

  • 1.2 litre cold water, to dilute
  • 1 kg ice cubes
  • 8 whole calamansi, halved, to garnish

Method

  1. Roll the calamansi firmly under your palm on the worktop to loosen the flesh, then halve them across the middle and squeeze the juice into a jug through a fine sieve, catching the pips.
  2. Warm the sugar with the 200 ml of water and the pinch of salt in a small pan, stirring, until the sugar has entirely dissolved. Do not boil. Take off the heat and cool completely.
  3. Stir the cold syrup into the calamansi juice. This concentrate keeps in a sealed bottle in the refrigerator for two weeks and is the base of everything that follows.
  4. To serve, mix the concentrate with the 1.2 litres of cold water in a large jug, taste, and adjust with more water or more syrup until it is bracing rather than sweet.
  5. Fill tall glasses with ice, pour over the juice, and drop a squeezed calamansi half into each glass. Serve at once.

Notes

Calamansi are sold fresh by Filipino grocers and, more widely, frozen whole or as bottled juice; the frozen fruit works perfectly and needs only thawing before squeezing. Bottled concentrate is a poor relation but will do at a pinch. Where no calamansi can be had, a mixture of two parts lime juice to one of orange juice comes closest to the balance of sharp acid and mandarin perfume, though it lacks the faint bitterness of the peel. Served hot with honey and a slice of ginger in place of the cold water, the same concentrate is the Philippine remedy for a cough and a sore throat. The concentrate is also the base of toyomansi, mixed one to one with soy sauce and a sliced chilli, which is set beside grilled fish, fried chicken, and lumpia at almost every Filipino meal.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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