Browse recipes

Tamarind loosened in hot water and sweetened into a sour-brown cooler with a long, mouth-watering finish. Sharper and more savory than it looks.

Dried hibiscus steeped briefly, sweetened while hot and chilled hard: tart, cranberry-deep and an almost unreasonable red. The most common agua fresca in Mexico.

Soda chanh: lime juice and sugar syrup in a tall glass, topped with soda water and stirred at the table. Three ingredients, correctly assembled.

Lemon juice and a whole bunch of mint blitzed with ice into a pale-green frozen slush. The drink of every Levantine summer street.

Five minutes, one blender, no cooking. Ripe avocado and cocoa whipped into a mousse so dark and silky nobody will guess the base. Chill it and it sets like the real thing.

Indian lemonade, made savory with black salt and roasted cumin. Sweet, sour, salty and faintly smoky. The fastest cure there is for a hot afternoon.

Elderflower cordial cut with lemon, cucumber and mint over a lot of ice. Barely a recipe, and the most refreshing thing in the book.

Dried chrysanthemum flowers and goji berries steeped into a pale gold, honeyed-floral tea, served cold with the softened berries still in the glass.

Gunpowder green tea brewed strong over a fistful of spearmint, sweetened hot and poured over ice. Bracing, fragrant and very sweet, as it should be.

Ripe watermelon blended with water and lime into something lighter and more drinkable than juice. Five minutes of work and it tastes like the middle of summer.

A dark, herby, aggressively savory spiced water: mint, cilantro, tamarind and roasted cumin. Drunk as an appetiser, and it genuinely works as one.

Fresh pineapple blended with ginger and lime into a thick, golden punch. Sweet, sour and hot all at once, and it takes ten minutes.

Strawberries crushed into lemonade with a handful of basil. The basil sounds odd and is the entire reason to make it.

Gnamakoudji: raw ginger blended, steeped and strained, then sharpened with lime and sweetened. Sold ice-cold on every roadside from Bamako to Abidjan.

A pale, fragrant cordial of lemon, sugar and rose water, diluted to order. Floral and cold and old-fashioned, and it keeps for weeks.