My Teta’s Lemonade - without Lemon Juicer

Name: How to cook My Teta’s Lemonade - without Lemon Juicer - cookcic.com
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Us

Introduce

Chef :

Linda L.

My Teta’s Lemonade - without Lemon Juicer

Teta is the Lebanese word for Grandma, and if there’s one thing I regret not doing in my life, it’s that I’d never thought of taking photos of my teta cooking when she was still here with us. Not a single photo of her hands crafting the food and doing her magic in the kitchen! I made this lemonade the same way she’d do it. I’m glad I used to “unconsciously” watch her cooking and I can still picture her with every single step.

Ingredient

Food ration :

6 servings

big/medium oranges

medium lemons (not hard ones)

3/4 cup

caster sugar

2 tablespoons

orange blossom water

Cooking instructions

* Step 1

Teta Soumaya (Soumaya is her name) would pick the ripe oranges which are better to juice, and not always the good looking ones. She’d buy enough to make around 5l (but of course i made much less)

* Step 2

She would wash the lemons and oranges, chop each into 8 pieces and throw everything into the biggest bowl she has.

* Step 3

Then she would add a 3/4 cup of sugar to the bowl, put it aside for almost 30 minutes to an 1 hour, and go cook us something else in between while waiting for the oranges to soften up. The next step will require strong hands and a sprinkle of love.

* Step 4

Teta Soumaya would now start the real work. She’d start squeezing the oranges with her hands to get all the juices out. Bless her, she was very strong thanks to her own gym - her kicthen, where every ingredient was crafted with her bare hands and not with machines.

* Step 5

Once all the oranges are squeezed, she’d move them into another deep bowl with a colander on top.

* Step 6

After that, she’d want to make sure that the orange pieces are completely dry like a desert! She’d grab a handful of the peels, squeeze with her two hands and throw them away. She’d repeat this until there’s nothing left. This way all the tasty flavorful pieces of the flesh and pulps are in the juice as well, except for the seeds of course!

* Step 7

It’s almost the last step now! Teta would pour cold water (taste as you go!), add a few drops of the orange blossom water in the juice without measuring (her eyes were her scale) and give the mixture a soft stir with her old wrinkly hands that held many stories, and cooked a great food for many generations! (This brand of orange blossom water is lebanese and you can find it on amazon)

* Step 8

We’re almost done - now she’d call us to the kitchen to have a glass of the heavenly juice, before she’d start emptying it in big bottles of coca-cola that she’d always save in her kitchen cupboards.

* Step 9

In the end, she’d rinse the bottles to make sure they’re clean from outside, put some in the fridge and hide the rest to be consumed over the next few days (because we were like crickets who’d consume everything she’d make in a matter of seconds)