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.

A no-cook chickpea chaat that's tangy, fresh and ready in ten minutes. Chickpeas tossed with red onion, cucumber and tomato, brightened with lemon and chaat masala.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Rice and cinnamon soaked overnight, blended and strained into a cloudy, faintly sweet, milky drink. Served very cold, it is the standard partner to anything spicy.

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

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

Maple syrup infused with chili and a little vinegar until it is sweet, hot and sharp all at once. The vegan answer to hot honey, and it goes on everything.