Agua de Jamaica – Hibiscus Cooler

I picked up this really great “cook”
book on my iPad by Fany Gerson titled Paletas: Authentic Recipes for Mexican Ice Pops, Shaved Ice and Aguas Frescas. Paletas are essentially popsicles, but to look at the case
of paletas at a paleteria makes me feel like our popsicles in the United States
haven’t lived up to their potential. Popsicle makers have been holding out on us. With craft ice cream shops making ripples back home, maybe craft popsicles
will finally get their time in the sun? Food cart entrepreneurs in PDX and SEA, this should be on your radar.

Unless you make your own popsicles
you are more or less limited to what you can find in the frozen food isle at
the supermarket or what the ice cream man has in stock (mostly overly sweet artificially flavored options). Twin pops anyone? Gosh I miss those.

My mom used to make popsicles out of orange juice, apple
juice and lemonade (am I missing any flavors mom?) I didn’t realize that there
are so many DIY variations on popsicles (just google image search popsicle recipes and you’ll be absorbed/inspired for at least 30 solid minutes, if not longer…speaking from experience). ps. Auto correct keeps wanting me to capitalize popsicle…is it just me or is that weird?

We visited my first paleteria
yesterday after lunch and there were at least 24 different flavors that fell
into two different categories – de crema o de agua. Basic translation is
creamy and not creamy popsicles. Many of the paletas have chunks of fruit,
nuts, seeds, candy, flowers, you name it, hovering just beneath the surface.  Not knowing what
some of the flavors were, I opted for my safe first choice, coconut (coco). I’d
been craving a coconut paleta since I had scanned the recipe in Gerson’s book (.
It was a creamy, sweet (but not too sweet) paleta with grated coconut throughout
and a little ball of sticky sweetened coconut at the base of the stick where it
entered the paleta. We ducked into a fabric store on our way back home and one
of the employees, laughing, informed me that it was too cold for paletas.

I smiled sheepishly, “Yo sé (I know).” I wanted to
tell her that they were a new discovery for me, that I’d just read about them
in this great book and that I was making up for lost time but all I could
muster was a simple statement about how “La quería (I wanted it).” Funny how my
limited Spanish oftentimes makes me sound like I’m just cresting seven years old
– simple desires, simple requests, simple explanations. Then I mentioned, chasing
a drip before it escaped from the paleta, that it’s much warmer here than back
home.

The book Paletas includes recipes for paletas (obviously) as well as
raspados (shaved ice) and aguas frescas (no direct English translation for this
one…but it’s more or less punch or tea). I am in LOVE with aguas frescas. I was
first introduced to them in Walla Walla, WA at one of the many taco trucks. Agua
de Jamaica (hibiscus cooler) is a beautiful deep, rich, beet-like color that
has a hint of sour with a sweet floral finish. When I saw a bin full of
hibiscus flowers being sold by the kilo at the supermarket the other day I
picked up the scoop and went to town. Now, we have agua de jamaica (pronounced hi-may-ka) cooling in
the refrigerator. Yum.

Hibiscus flowers

Here’s the recipe – it’s shockingly
simple. If you can find hibiscus flowers where you are it’s worth it.
Alternately, next time you visit a taco truck ask if they have any aguas
frescas. My favorites are jamaica, tamarindo and horchata (I’ll get around to
making those other ones eventually – they’re in the book too).

Agua de Jamaica – Hibiscus Cooler

 

Makes ~1/2 Gallon (8 Cups)

Adapted from Fany Gerson’s book Paletas

Ingredients

 

2 cups dried hibiscus flowers

8 1/4 cups water

3/4 cup sugar (more or less as
desired depending on how sweet or tart you like it)

• Rinse the flowers in cold water and
  let the water drain all the way.
• Soak the flowers water in a saucepan for at
  least 4 hours, but Gerson recommends soaking them overnight (which is what I
  did).
• Boil the mixture and simmer for 10 minutes.
• Stir in the sugar until it
  dissolves completely and continue to simmer for 10 more minutes.
• Let cool to
  room temperature.
• Pour through a mesh strainer into a pitcher and press the
  mixture with a spoon to extract as much of the good stuff as possible.
• Add more water to bring it up to about 8 cups.
• Chill
  and serve! It’s really that easy.

This recipe is incredibly easy to scale up or down if you want more than 8 cups worth of this beverage! Most of the restaurants serve them from big glass jars – probably in the 3-5 gallon range.