Juice Season

It's that time of year again when the liver needs a little love. To help us get over the party season, at Colebrooke Row we're huge fans of fresh juices. This week we'll be drinking Apple Mojitos and praising the homogeniser which makes our fresh juices that extra bit tasty. 

The Apple Mojito

 

- 6 mint sprigs
- 15ml sugar syrup
- 10ml fresh lemon juice
- 15ml fresh lime juice
- 75ml freshly pressed green apple juice
- lemon and lime slice and mint sprig, to garnish



1. Muddle the mint sprigs with sugar syrup in a cocktail tin. 

2. Mix in the lemon and lime juices, then add crushed ice and the apple juice.

3. Shake twice and then pour the mixture into a highball glass. 

4. Garnish with a lemon and lime slice and a bruised mint sprig.



At Colebrooke Row, Tony's Apple Mojito recipe is a winner for bartenders and the home-cocktail maker alike. 

There are heaps of detox properties in every element of this drink. As a whole, the three major components are fantastic for facilitating and improving digestion. In addition, lime juice works hard to rejuvenate the skin, apples aid in preventing anaemia and weakness, and mint helps with both headaches and nausea and activates the saliva glands to promote taste.

For those not drinking alcohol, there's no reason not to be drinking something really good. This is simple to make, especially in batches. Happy detoxing!

An Ode to the Homogeniser

Traditional stirring and mixing methods don't always produce optimum results when employed for many blending tasks. A homogeniser is a nifty machine that transforms the consistency of various types of material by breaking up its particles, resulting in a more uniform - or homogenous, product. There are several types of homogeniser used in the food industry and in science laboratories alike, which break up tissue, plants, soil and food. The original homogeniser is the humble pestle and mortar, used for thousands of years to disrupt the consistency of material and is still a standard tool in laboratories and kitchens. Whereas older technologies simply focused on the disruption of material, newer technologies prioritise quality. For example, the ultrasonic homogeniser uses ultrasonic sound waves to create high and low pressure cycles which breaks up the particles of individual liquids to allow them to blend together. 


High-pressure homogenisation is an important process in the sanitary treatment of food and nutritional products, especially dairy. It provides improved product stability, shelf life and digestion as well as improving the final taste. Using a high-pressure homogeniser can also significantly reduce the amount of additives required, especially with baby foods and dairy products. The effect is achieved by forcing the product through a special homogenising valve at a very high pressure. Typically, products enter the homogeniser with sizes ranging from 1 micron (1000th of a gram) to 0.4 microns. 


At Colebrooke Row we like to use a homogeniser for fresh juices which are used in the bar either on their own or in cocktails. Our homogeniser is a simple model that works using a series of fast-spinning sharp blades. The homogeniser is fantastic for juicing fibrous fruits such as lemon, lime and rhuburb: when the blades spin, they break up the fibres of the fruit, which produces a rounder, fuller and richer flavour. There are different levels on the homogeniser so that you can choose the speed at which the blades spin. The more fibrous the juice, the higher the level needed. However, be careful not to homogenise a juice for too long at too high a speed, or it will begin to burn. Homogenising juice is a fast and simple way to really to improve the texture and mouth-feel of juice - it makes being good to yourself all that more pleasurable!