Lemonada (and other Greek Fest goodies)

The Norfolk Greek Festival holds a special place in mine and James's hearts -- during his first visit home with me at the end of freshman year of college, I took him to Greek Fest and plied him with food in hopes of creating a positive association with my hometown (I think it worked). Since then, we've done our best to hit it up every year that we can, and last weekend, we took Anouk for the very first time.

Anouk enjoyed her first Greek Fest very much, especially the eating part of it (which, honestly, is most of it). Every single thing she ate, she loved, from dolmades to gyros to calamari. In fact, she enjoyed everything so much that we spent the rest of the weekend looking up Greek recipes we could make for her at home. Most of what we found looked pretty labor intensive but this simple recipe for Greek lemonade was so intriguing (and turned out to be so delicious) that I knew from the first sip that it was a keeper.

Lemonada

5-6 lemons
1 cup sugar (or to taste)
2 cups water (or to taste)
1 tsp orange blossom water (we got ours at Azars, in Ghent, but it's also available online)
3-4 mint sprigs

The secret that makes this lemonade taste so good seems to be in the juicing technique, which incorporates more of the oils and the rind than normal juicing procedures. Cut 5-6 large lemons into the thinnest slices possible. Place in a bowl, and pour 1/2 cup of the sugar over top. Let sit for 5 minutes, then use your hands to squish and squeeze the lemon slices. Strain the juice through a sieve into a pitcher. Repeat this process, using the rest of the lemons and sugar, until you can't get any more juice out of the lemons. (For us, 5-6 large lemons yielded about 2 cups of juice). The lemon pulp and peels should look pretty shredded by the time you're done.

Add water and additional sugar to taste (we added about 2 cups of water, but didn't add any more sugar). Add the orange blossom water to the lemonade, stir well. Crush 2-3 mint leaves, add to a glass with ice, and pour the lemonade over it. Garnish with an additional sprig of mint and some lemon slices.

This is the best lemonade I've ever had -- the orange blossom water adds a nice floral note and the mint spices everything up and makes it even more refreshing, somehow. Next time I make it, I'm toying with the idea of adding sparkling water for fizz. I also think it would be just swell with a jot of vodka in it, too. But that is an entry for another blog entirely.

Some more pictures from our Greek Fest experience: