Destination
Puerto Vallarta
The story
Agua fresca — literally "fresh water" — is the Mexican mercado thirst-quencher and one of the country's most-photographed food images: a row of tall clear glass tanks, each filled with a different-coloured drink, on the counter of a market stall. Red jamaica (hibiscus), cream-coloured horchata (rice and cinnamon), brown tamarindo (tamarind), pink sandía (watermelon), yellow piña (pineapple), green pepino-limón (cucumber-lime), each with a wooden ladle sticking out and a small stack of plastic cups next to it. Every mercado in Mexico has an agua fresca counter, sold by the cup for 15 pesos, poured over ice and drunk fast. The traditional pairing is with a heavy meal — tacos, tamales, quesadillas — and the sweetness cuts through the fat.
Method
Bring 1.5 litres water to a boil in a pot. Add jamaica flowers and cinnamon. Simmer 10 minutes. Off the heat, add sugar and stir to dissolve. Steep 30 minutes to cool. Strain through a fine sieve into a pitcher, pressing the flowers to extract every drop. Add lime juice. Refrigerate at least 2 hours. Serve over ice.
Combine the rice, cinnamon stick and 1.2 litres of water in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate overnight (or at least 8 hours). The rice will soften and the water will turn cloudy.
Tip the rice, cinnamon and soaking water into a blender. Blend 90 seconds on high until smooth. Strain through a fine sieve into a pitcher, pressing to extract every drop. Whisk in the milk, sugar and vanilla. Refrigerate. Serve over ice with a dust of cinnamon on top.
Bring 1 litre water to a boil. Add tamarind pulp and simmer 10 minutes, breaking up with a spoon. Off the heat, let cool 30 minutes. Push through a sieve into a pitcher, pressing to extract every drop of pulp and discarding the fibres and seeds. Add piloncillo (crushed or grated for faster dissolving), the remaining 500ml water and salt. Whisk to dissolve. Refrigerate. Serve over ice.
Combine watermelon, water, sugar and lime in a blender. Blend 30 seconds until smooth. Strain through a fine sieve into a pitcher (optional — some prefer with pulp). Refrigerate. Serve over ice with fresh mint leaves.
For a full mercado-style display: pour each agua fresca into a separate glass pitcher. Set out over ice with a small ladle and a stack of cups. Provide extra lime wedges and a bowl of ice.
Pour each agua over a glass of ice. Add a squeeze of lime for jamaica, tamarindo and sandía. Dust horchata with cinnamon. Serve immediately.
All four aguas hold in the fridge 24 hours. After that, jamaica turns bitter, horchata separates, tamarindo turns cloudy and sandía loses its brightness. Make on the day.
Tips
- Dried jamaica flowers, not tea bags. Whole dried hibiscus flowers (jamaica) give you a deep tart flavour. Hibiscus tea bags are far weaker and give a pale, watery result. Any Mexican grocer sells bags of jamaica; some supermarkets stock them under "hibiscus tea."
- Soak the rice overnight. Faster methods (blending raw rice with hot water) give a gritty, starchy result. Overnight soaking is the traditional technique and produces the classical silky horchata.
- Tamarind pulp with seeds. Pre-shelled tamarind is often not tamarind at all but a candy paste with additives. Real tamarind pulp comes in a block with seeds and fibres; you strain out the solids yourself.
- Taste for sweetness. Every fruit is different. Start with less sugar than the recipe calls for, taste, then adjust. Mercado aguas are notably less sweet than American versions — the fruit does the work.
- Piloncillo, not brown sugar, for tamarindo. Piloncillo (unrefined Mexican cane sugar sold as cones) has a specific molasses depth that pairs with tamarindo. If unavailable, dark muscovado sugar is the closest substitute.
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