{"id":652,"date":"2008-06-27T10:02:39","date_gmt":"2008-06-27T10:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/2008\/06\/27\/friday-random-recipe-homemade-tonic-water\/"},"modified":"2008-06-27T10:02:39","modified_gmt":"2008-06-27T10:02:39","slug":"friday-random-recipe-homemade-tonic-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/27\/friday-random-recipe-homemade-tonic-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Random Recipe: Homemade Tonic Water"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> This is an interesting recipe, in a very unusual vein for me.<br \/>\nHomemade tonic water.<\/p>\n<p> I hate tonic water. I really despise the stuff. But like a lot of<br \/>\npeople, I have some strange twitchy muscle ticks, in my legs and my<br \/>\neyelids. A few years ago, I was talking to my opthamologist about the<br \/>\neyelid twitch thing, and he said that while there was a prescription<br \/>\ndrug that he could give me for it, he&#8217;d found that most people got<br \/>\nmore relief from just drinking tonic water. The quinine that gives it<br \/>\nits distinctive bitter taste works better than the prescription. So I<br \/>\ngave it a try. It didn&#8217;t actually do a whole lot for my eyelid thing,<br \/>\nbut it did wonders for my twitchy legs at bedtime. So ever since, I&#8217;ve<br \/>\nforced myself to drink the stuff.<\/p>\n<p> Then a few weeks ago, I saw a link to a recipe for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jeffreymorgenthaler.com\/2008\/how-to-make-your-own-tonic-water\/\">homemade tonic<br \/>\nwater<\/a>. I decided to give it a try. I couldn&#8217;t get exactly the<br \/>\ningredients that were suggested, so I add libbed a bit. The end result<br \/>\nwas <em>fantastic<\/em>. It&#8217;s got a strong bitter quinine bite, but<br \/>\nit&#8217;s also got a wonderful flavor in addition to the quinine. This<br \/>\nvariation is particularly good mixed with a nice white rum or cachaca.<br \/>\nIf you leave out the cardamom, it&#8217;s great with bourbon. (I know gin is<br \/>\nthe traditional addition, but I just don&#8217;t like the taste of gin.)\n<\/p>\n<p> With this, for the first time, I can easily imagine drinking<br \/>\ntonic water even if it didn&#8217;t have any useful medicinal qualities.<\/p>\n<p> Here&#8217;s my recipe.<\/p>\n<p> <b>Ingredients<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> 1\/8 cup powdered chinchona bark.<\/li>\n<li> Zest and juice of one orange.<\/li>\n<li> Zest and juice of one lemon.<\/li>\n<li> Zest and juice of one lime.<\/li>\n<li> 1\/2 tsp allspice berries.<\/li>\n<li> 1\/2 tsp cardamom pods.<\/li>\n<li> 2 cups water.<\/li>\n<li> Pinch salt. <\/li>\n<li> Agave syrup; about 1 1\/2 cups.<\/li>\n<li> Seltzer water.\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Instructions<\/b><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>  Put the water in a pot on high heat. Add all of fruit and<br \/>\nherbs.<\/li>\n<li> When it comes to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and let it cook<br \/>\nfor about 20 minutes.<\/li>\n<li> Let it cool. Strain it through a paper coffee filter. (This<br \/>\ntakes a long time, but if you don&#8217;t use the paper filter, a lot of<br \/>\nthe chinchona powder will stay in, and you don&#8217;t want to get a<br \/>\nmouthful of it; it&#8217;s incredibly bitter.)<\/li>\n<li> Add water to bring the volume back up to two cups.\n<\/ol>\n<p> You&#8217;ve now got the basic concentrate for tonic water. You can<br \/>\neither mix the agave in now, or you can do it when you make a glass<br \/>\nof tonic. It&#8217;s less work to just add the syrup now, but the<br \/>\nconcentrate will keep longer if you don&#8217;t. I don&#8217;t mix them.<\/p>\n<p> To make the tonic, mix together two tablespoons of concentrate<br \/>\n(more if you like it extra bitter), and about 1 1\/2 tablespoons of<br \/>\nagave syrup. Then add one cup of seltzer water.<\/p>\n<p> You can use a basic sugar syrup instead of the agave; the standard<br \/>\nbar mix simple syrup substitutes with roughly the same quantity. But I<br \/>\nthink that the agave is better. Agave has a slighly different<br \/>\nmouthfeel than cane sugar, and I think that it sweetens and smooths<br \/>\nout the tonic without cutting too much of the bitterness. Cane sugar<br \/>\nto me either doesn&#8217;t taste sweet enough, or kills the edge of the<br \/>\ntonic.<\/p>\n<p> To make a killer rum&amp;tonic, take a nice light rum or cachaca<br \/>\n(Cachaca is a brazilian liquor made from sugar cane juice, rather than<br \/>\nfrom molasses; it tastes like a mild rum with a bit of grassiness),<br \/>\nand mix it, 1 part rum to 3 parts tonic, and serve over ice.<\/p>\n<p> The one problem with this recipe is that Chinchona bark is kind<br \/>\nof hard to find. The most common source of it is flaky herbal medicine<br \/>\nstores. But some of the really large online spice shops have it. I<br \/>\nbought a bunch from a place called <a href=\"http:\/\/tenzingmomo.com\/\">&#8220;Tenzing Momo&#8221;<\/a>. They definitely<br \/>\nqualify as &#8220;flaky herbal medicine store&#8221;, but they also carry a really<br \/>\ngood selection of cooking herbs and spices. Chinchona is sold by the<br \/>\nounce; one ounce is about 1\/4 cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is an interesting recipe, in a very unusual vein for me. Homemade tonic water. I hate tonic water. I really despise the stuff. But like a lot of people, I have some strange twitchy muscle ticks, in my legs and my eyelids. A few years ago, I was talking to my opthamologist about the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recipes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-aw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}