Calamansi Juice Concentrate 桔子浓缩果汁

 After resuming the 9-5 working life, I hardly spent much time in taking care of my garden. However, my 5 years old calamansi tree never seems to fail me by continuing fruit abundantly.  Calamansi is Limau Kasturi in Malay or 桔子in Chinese.  We couldn’t seem to consume the fruits fast enough to cope with its ripening rate. Rather than letting them simply rot and went to waste, I had to harvest them and shared with neighbours and friends.

When I passed a bag of these little citrus fruits to my Sister-in-law who lives in Penang, she taught me a great way to preserve them into concentrated juice that can be kept in the fridge and can be easily consumed as and when we want. What I like most is, it is a very simple way to make. The recipe ratio for making this juice concentrate is 1:3, i.e. one part of juice and three parts of sugar. For my first attempt I used white sugar.  In my 2^nd batch I replaced white sugar with brown sugar instead as some claimed brown sugar is healthier than white sugar. If brown sugar is used, the colour of the juice concentrate becomes darker and looks like honey instead of light golden colour as shown below.

 

You can also check out my old post of Calamansi Sour Plum Juice, to learn how to make fresh Calamansi juice with Sour plum, another great thirst quenching beverage that you will yarn to have in the hot summer. Calamansi is a member of the citrus fruits family.  It is high in Ascorbic Acid or vitamin C content and best known for its healing effect to soothe the throat, a great natural cure for sore throat.

Now, at home my fridge is always ready with 1-2 bottles of this juice extract and by mixing 1 to 2 table spoons of the juice extract, we get to serve a glass of healthy soothing fruit juice with no artificial colouring and preservative, let’s cheer to that! J 

Calamansi Juice Concentrate   Ingredients:   Calamansi lime ( Limau Kasturi) juice – 1 bowl, Sugar – brown sugar or white sugar – 21/2 to 3 bowl (To your liking) Pasteurised bottle to store the juice   Method:   1.     Wash lime, halve the lime, remove seeds and squeeze juice out into a bowl. 2.     Measure sugar using the same size of bowl with ratio of 1:3 3.     Pour juice into pot, add in sugar and stir well and cook in low medium heat.   4.     Once the sugar fully melts into juice turn off heat and let it cool before bottle the juice and keep in fridge. Tips: Make sure no seed get into the juice else it made the juice turns bitter.   桔子浓缩果汁 主料： 桔子汁 1碗， 糖 - 红糖或白糖 -  21/2至3碗（随你喜好） 消毒瓶子 方法： 1.     清洗桔子，将桔子切一半，取出种子，将果汁挤出一碗。 2.     使用相同尺寸的碗，比例为1：3测量糖 3.     将果汁倒入锅中，加入糖并搅拌均匀，中低温煮至糖融化。 4.     一旦糖完全融化成浓缩果汁关闭火，让它冷却，然后瓶装进消毒瓶子 5.     并保存在冰箱里   温馨提示： 确保没有籽掉进果汁，它会使果汁变得苦涩。

Eat and drink in Krabi

Thai cuisine has always been our family’s favourite cuisine. This is also one of the reasons why we favour Thailand as one of our top choices of traveling destinations.

As mentioned in my previous Krabi traveling post, in this episode I will cover the story of the food that we savoured in this little Southern Province of Thailand.

During our stay in Krabi, most of our lunch meals, if not covered by the day tour operators, were decided by exploring the local street food along our lodging area in Ao Anang. We would simply sit down and ate as and when we came across some street food that looked palatable.

Among those street food Ray and I favoured the most was the BBQ chicken! It wasn’t KFC, but it was still finger-licking good! If BBQ is not your cup of tea, then Banana pancake is another “must eat” not to be missed in Krabi!

Krabi’s night market was another great place to taste their local street food. Similar to other Thailand tourist spots, Krabi also had a walking street night bazaar which operated in the evening of Friday-Sunday in Krabi town.

Krabi town is located more than half an hour driving distance from Ao Anang beach. We went on a Friday night taking their public bus transport, essentially a bigger version of Tuk Tuk. I was a bit disappointed as the Krabi town walking street night bazaar was much smaller in scale than what we experienced in ChiangMai and Bangkok.

In Ao Anang beach area, there were lots of Thai and Western restaurants. Authentic Thai Cuisine and Western food were easily available. We also noticed many locals in Krabi were Muslims, hence halal food was just as common. Many of the Thai restaurants were operated by Muslim owners. This explained why so many Malay Muslim tourists from Malaysia liked to visit Krabi.

The following were some of the Thai authentic rice meals we ate.

May I introduce a beverage to quench your thirst in Krabi? My number one choice definitely was their fruit shakes! Sorry, to those who thought it might be beer

During our time in Krabi, other than plain drinking water, we simply tried out every flavor of fruit shakes available.

Basically we just shake, shake, shake away our thirst with all sorts of fresh fruit smoothies that we could find, Mango, mixed fruits, strawberry, coconut, dragon fruit… The top rated shake to both the father and son was still their forever loved banana shake while my pick was mixed fruits which varied from stall to stall, a combination of any mixture of fresh fruits they had on hand upon order made.

So, remember if you happen to travel to Krabi, after the spicy Thai food, as the Taylor Swift’s song goes "Shake It Off" to shake the heat away!

So, remember if you happen to travel to Krabi, after the spicy Thai food, just like what Taylor Swift song "Shake It Off" to shake the heat away !

Herbal Napier Grass drinks 马草凉茶

Let’s try a glass of Herbal Drink?
This plant was planted by my neighbour next to my Bunga Kantan. Initially I wanted to clear it, thinking it was weed. Then, my neighbour quickly came to me and told me it was one type of herbal plant used as a great detoxing supplements and consumed as a herbal drink. She later showed me its health benefits as illustrated in a Chinese Herbs magazine. The Chinese name of this plant is 马草, literally translated as “horse grass”.
She said this plant was once very popular and widely sought after in Taiwan. It was even made into commercial skin caring juice, with advertisement claiming its effect in treating acne problems.



Later, I did some research and discovered the English common name for this plant was Napier Grass. Scientifically its species is Pennisetum and it belongs to Poaceae family. You can find more information on this page.

According to the Chinese wiki, this plant is rich in vitamin C and is claimed to contain the anti-oxidant and even the anti-cancer effects. It is good for treating swelling and easing stomach-ache. After knowing the goodness of the plant, instead of disposing it, I helped her to water the plants regularly.

The normal way to consume the plant is to blend the leaves and extract its juice to drink fresh without heating to prevent oxidization. It is also not advised to blend at higher than 900 rpm or above 50 ℃, as it will destroy its chlorophyll and vitamins.

However, instead of blending into juice which may taste a bit too raw to us, another way to consume it is to boil the grass along with its stalks and added with rock sugar to make into delicious herbal drink! The taste of the drink is very much similar to drinking Bamboo Sugar Cane, really tasty!

Beer anyone?

No, this is the Chinese Herbal Napier Grass drink,

served in a beer mug 马草凉茶

 If you happen to find this plant growing wildly somewhere, do try to take some back and try out. It is such a great refreshing and cooling drink especially if you have symptoms of a “heaty” body such as sore throat and acne. Every now and then, I will pluck some to make herbal beverages for my family.

Calamansi Sour Plum Juice 桔子酸梅汁

Let’s squeeze and Zest up!

Calamansi or Calamondin or Limau Kasturi (in Malay) or 桔子(in Chinese) is a hybrid of lime and orange belonging to the citrus family. Its size is much smaller than lime. Calamansi is best grown in warm weather and is widely found in Southeast Asia, especially in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

One and a half year ago, at only RM5, I bought this Calamansi tree in a small pot from a nearby garden nursery and planted it in my vegetable garden. It grew healthily in the garden since then. However, it seemed like ages to see it flower and bear fruits. At the beginning of this year, my neighbour helped me to fertilise the plant with fertiliser that was supposed to encourage plants to flower. After this application, the plant still did not flower as much as we anticipated. It only produced a few flowers and I only managed to harvest one fruit at the end. L

I was kind of disappointed but nevertheless I continued watering it and twice a month applied normal poultry manure fertiliser. Finally, a month ago, we were overwhelmed to see it flowered and produced abundant fruits!  

Calamansi Tree life cycle

 While writing this post I did some research on Calamansi tree. Then only I realised Calamansi tree typically takes 2 years after planting to fruit. This fact, matched exactly with the timing of my tree, which has been nearly 2 years since I planted it.  It’s the time for it to flower and fruit.

 

Calamansi is one of the most common citrus used in Southeast Asian cuisines. In Malaysia, Calamansi (Limau Kasturi) juice is one of the key ingredients added in Sambal belacan and used in Nyonya Food. Other than using its acidity as a natural preservative additive to food, it is also great for making drinks.

Calamansi juice, as a drink, makes one of the best thirst-quenchers. It is best to consume during a heat wave. Even though Calamansi juice tastes acidic and sour but when consumed, they are alkalizing to the stomach, which helps in weight loss and detoxification.  Similar to its citrus family members, Calamansi is rich in vitamin C too and is great for skin whitening.

 Seeing the abundant fruits on the tree, I couldn’t wait to harvest them to make one of my favourite fruit juices which I often order when we dine out.  It’s called Calamansi sour plum juice.

Calamansi juice is one of the popular beverages that is easily available in Malaysia eatery shop.  It is very soothing to the throat, quench thirst and a great remedy for sore throat. This drink also helps digestion and is known for relieving the symptoms of gout.  So, if you happen to get them at your local veggie shop, do give them a squeeze and drink up! It’s a great substitute for lemonade!  

Calamansi Sour Plum Juice 桔子酸梅汁