Topic: Fruit juices - Middle East style

[George]

I know there are a few people on here who have spent time out in the Middle East, like myself.

One of many fond memories were street outlets selling freshly made fruit juices. My two favourite flavours were lemon and strawberry. The basic approach seemed to be to throw whole fruits with a fair amount of sugar, plus water and ice into a blender. Whizz the whole lot together, pass through a sieve and serve - delicious.

Yesterday, I tried making a lemon drink for the first time. I found a recipe for 'lemonade' which was simply lemon and the other ingredients as above. Most people seemed to rate the recipe highly, but at least one person said it was undrinkable, and they threw the whole batch away. My opinion was that it was a bit 'rough' as in tart, but I drank it all, anyway. The author said it came from a recipe book accompanying a Kenwood blender, and that perhaps the original recipe included egg.

I have various Kenwood mixer booklets and found a recipe which does indeed include egg, so I tried that, this morning. Wow - what a difference the egg makes. It was a lot more drinkable than the recipe without egg. Does anyone know how raw egg ( including the shell!) would work to improve the flavour and overall appeal?

Here's the recipe which I had success with, as adapted very slightly by myself:

(my recipe removed due to copyright concerns)

See the original recipe here:

http://www.kenwoodworld.com/uk/cooking-with-kenwood/recipes/kitchen-machines-recipes/drinks-smoothies-and-cocktails/kenwood-lemonade

[Gav Iscon]

Heres the updated recipe for which they discard the extra crunch.

http://www.kenwoodworld.com/uk/cooking-with-kenwood/recipes/food-processor-recipes/drinks/lemonade

Interesting that it was their first demonstration.

[Onions]

Interesting that they don't use egg at all now.

(Geo, to answer your original question I expect the egg acts as a binding agent, cf. how one is sometimes put in a burger recipe, etc)

[George]

Heres the updated recipe for which they discard the extra crunch.

A retrograde step in my opinion, based on my two attempts. Perhaps they are over concerned about the health and safety (for vulnerable individuals) of consuming raw egg. The use of caster sugar is also money down the drain, because the blender will grind down the granulated sugar to produce exactly the same result, unless I'm mistaken.  The supermarket had run out of unwaxed lemons so I used ordinary lemons (as specified In the Kenwood recipe book), and the end result was so good, I have to question the extra expense of buying unwaxed lemons.

Onions - perhaps you are correct about the role of the egg. The mixture seemed easier to sieve but the most important aspect was the greatly improved taste.