Hot chocolate with Davidson’s plums

 

This recipe is inspired by the Warndu Mai (Good Food) Cookbook, by Damien Coulthard and Rebecca Sullivan. This contemporary cookbook is showcasing Australian native foods with many recipes. Their Davidson Plum Hot Chocolate is altered here to suit our needs. The plums are fresh off the tree.

In the foreword Bruce Pascoe writes:  “You can’t eat our Aboriginal food if you can’t swallow our history.”

get

75g dark chocolate (90%, organic & fair trade)
¼ l milk
4 large Davidson’s plums
2 tbsp honey

do

Press the juice out of the plums through a sieve.
Heat the milk in a small saucepan.
Add the chocolate in pieces.
Stir.
Add the plum juice and honey.
Stir while heating until hot but not boiling.

Serve hot in cups.
This rich chocolate drink will be enough for 3-4 cups. 

Cold Drinks from Finger Limes and Passionfruit

Get
1 litre of cold mineral water
or cold filtered water
4 finger limes
1 lime

Do
Pour water into jug. Cut finger limes lengthwise, discard seeds. Scrape vegetarian caviar into water and stir. Cut washed limes into halves. Juice one half and add to the water. Cut the other half of the lime into 6 thin slices and stick a few on the edge of the glass. Pour mixture into glasses and enjoy on a hot day.

Get
1 litre of mineral water
or filtered water
8 passion fruit
2 Tbsp of agave syrup

Do
Cut pulp out of ripe passion fruit and press through a fine mesh sieve. Add agave syrup, stir. Place in jug and pour cold water on top. Mix and serve cold.

More Finger limes

Infusion of Raspberries and Passionfruit

get
5 ripe native raspberries
1 ripe passionfruit
Some lemon juice
4 mugs of filtered boiling water

do
Wash berries, scoop out passionfruit and put into a jug. Add a few drops of lemon and pour over the boiling water. Mash fruit a bit with a spoon and allow to stand for 3-5 min with a cover.
Strain into cups (hot) or glasses (when cold) and decorate with some extra berries or lime wedges.

The drink is nice as a hot 'tea', but can also be served cold with endless variations.


See
Queensland Raspberries
Native Raspberry Leaf Tea and Fruit (Rubus rosifolius)
Cold drinks from finger limes or passion fruit

How coffee could help against neurodegenerative diseases in a world of ubiquitous pesticides

In a world doused with pesticides living beings suffer from neurodegenerative diseases. A study has found that drinking a lot of coffee might protect against Parkinson's, a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system.

Naomi Yamada-Fowler, Mats Fredrikson, Peter Söderkvist. Caffeine Interaction with Glutamate Receptor Gene GRIN2A: Parkinson's Disease in Swedish Population. PLoS ONE, 2014; 9 (6): e99294 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0099294

more on
Slow Coffee

Hot chocolate

Get
1½ heaped tbsp organic pure (100%) cocoa powder from fair trade
⅓ l organic milk (or unsweetened soya milk)
½ l water

Do
Boil water.
Mix dry cocoa powder in a jug to reduce lumps.
Mix boiling water into the powder.
Heat milk in a small saucepan until it rises.
Add to the liquid and mix well.
Serve hot.

Sweetness
Hot chocolate tastes best unsweetened. It is important not to use too much cocoa powder or it becomes bitter (rather than stronger). Soya milk is naturally a little sweeter than cow milk. If anyone requests it sweeter they may add a sweetening agent to their cup.

Sweet Cacao & Vanilla

Ginger fruit and herb tea

GET

Ginger, thumb size piece
5 strawberries
4 slices of citrus
A sprig of sage/ mint/ or lemon balm
2-3 fruit of roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) or rose hip
Honey (optional)

DO

Take the young ginger rhizome, wash, peel it thinly and slice.
Wash the strawberries and slice.
Slice 4 slices of an orange, remove the pith and pips
Wash hibiscus/ rose hip fruit
Wash herbs, remove stalks
Add all into jug
Pour 1 liter of boiled water over ingredients and let them steep for 6 minutes.


The drink can be composed freely depending on the availability of ingredients. It can be served hot or cold. You might want to strain the tea and add a few slices of strawberry only. Serve with or without honey.

Cacao & Vanilla

Cacao a la mexicana - for four cups

Get
½ litre of milk
½ cup of dark, organic cacoa powder
2 tsp. of Rapadura (cane) sugar
½ teaspoons of cinnamon powder
1 pinch of salt
1 small vanilla bean
½ cups of whipped cream, optional

Do
Heat up the milk.
Add the the scraped out vanilla bean to the milk
Mix in a bowl all dry ingredients and add to the hot milk while quickly stirring it.
Allow to boil and than remove the chocolate from the stove. Now stir in (the cream and) the vanilla.

- Recipe in altered form via Vanilla Trade
- Thanks to the pre-Columbian Mayan cultivators who have " been managing their forests for millennia to cultivate cacao and to make chocolate, and we know they were also cultivating vanilla to use it as a chocolate spice.The Maya created these forest gardens by introducing different types of species of wild cacao and vanilla from the surrounding forests, which meant that species that had previously been geographically separated were then able to hybridize because they were in the same place. That's the scenario we present in our research paper for how Tahitian vanilla got started. It is an evolutionary product, but also a Maya artifact." Pesach Lubinsky, University of California, Tahitian Vanilla Originated In Maya Forest, via Science Daily 260808

Hot chocolate without sugar