Going back to the beginning of the month...
I was in our capital city and figured I better buy some rice vinegar and some rice wine as they will come in handy for this challenge. But I couldn't find any.
So what do you do? You start googling to see if you can make it yourself within the time frame. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way due to lack of time and lack of the necessary ingredients. But google got me to something I had never heard of: Horchata....
So I figured I will make that instead.
Plenty recipes out there and some quite different from the others (even one with boiled rice).
I decided to use a recipe that didn't use milk (normal, evaporated, or coconut) as I wanted the "original" taste. Remember I had never heard of this stuff before, let alone tried it
I sort of went for this recipe:
https://www.thespruceeats.com/horchata-rice-drink-recipes-2342594
I ground the rice quite fine in my electric coffee grinder
Added cassia bark and kaffir lime zest (I had no "real" cinnamom and just finished my fresh limes)
And let it sit for a couple hours at room temperature.
To be honest: I don't really understand why they don't want you to grind the cinnamon and the rice together?
Then it said "use the blender to break down the cinnamon". Well, that's not easy with a stick blender. Should have done that at the start (see earlier remark). Then at some water and keep in the fridge.
After that, add remaining water.
It didn't say anything about straining, but I did that anyway as it looked way to gritty
I only made a quarter of the recipe as I was not too sure if I was going to like it
This is what I ended up with:
I added ice cubes before tasting.
It's not like anything I've had before. Definitely better ice and ice cold.
Next time I'll reduce cinnamon (cassia) and sugar as they were both a bit overpowering.
I think it would actually be a great summer drink with some fresh mint in it
Bonus picture for all of you in winter time:
