When I visited New Delhi, India a while back, I got addicted to the freshly prepared Pomegranate juice which took 4 people to prepare it. One person to cut and peel the skin, two people to remove and separate the juicy pips from the fruit, one to juice it through a specially made Pomegranate juicer. It is a laboriously task, pomegrante juice was not readily available just anywhere even in New Delhi. I only got to taste it in a New Delhi town club which provided a sunday buffet fest for its members.
Being in Singapore where we don't grow our own food, and we pretty much import everything(Talk about having big carbon foot prints) We get fruits as far as South Africa or Egypt. It was pomegranate season a few weeks back and at the local supermarket, I spotted Pomegranates from Afghanistan. The country is famous for its beautiful fruits like apricots and grapes, pity we don't get them here. I was excited! Fruits from an exotic warcountry!
Transporting these Pomegranates from this remote place to our city I suspect would have been difficult with the bad transport network over there. I could'nt imagine how much effort it took for these large beautiful pomegranates to reach our supermarkets.
It was worth the effort and it was more expensive compared to the ones from India. The Afghan pomegranates were sweeter and have a deeper ruby red color compared to the pale pink ones we regularly get from India. I got a few Afghan pomegranates from the supermarket and decided to juice them.
Juicing pomegranate was time-consuming and require pain-staking patience to remove the juicy dark ruby red pip one at a time. I had previously tried it before and failed miserably by squeezing it with muslin cloth. It resulted in disappointingly little juice with much of the precious nectar soaked by the cloth. A previous time, I ran the pips through a blender and it resulted in a bitter cloudy liquid because I juiced the white bits with it to save time.
The best way I found was cutting the pomegranate in half, and slowly pick the pips individually without breaking the ruby red sap.
I ran the pips through my new cold press juicer and it worked!. A whole fruit gave me half a glass of deep ruby nectar.
Yes it was worth all that effort and probably try it again next season. Meanwhile it is back to drinking bottled pomegranate juice for the moment.
Best way to Juice a Pomegranate
Cinnamon Buns
I love Philosophy products, they alway come up with some great food-smelling products. There were too many to choose from Sephora, lemon custard, pumpkin pie, vanilla birthday cake. I picked up a few realistic smelling body wash like lemonade and apple. More disappointing were the cocktail line (margarita, daiquri, mimosa) shampoo trio that I got.
This is one of my favorites, Cinnamon Bun. It smells like cinnamon ginger bread. What's great its a shampoo, bubble bath and body wash all in one. Good for travelling.
On the bottle, it gives you a recipe for creating your own cinnamon bun. Not tried it out yet. Let me know if it works out.
Philosophy's Cinnamon Buns Recipe
1/4 cup warm milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 portion dry yeast
1/4 warm water
2 1/2 cup flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon
4 tablespoon soften butter
2 eggs
- Mix all ingredients except yeast, water, flour let it cool,
- Stir and dissolve yeast in warm water
- Add yeast to first mixtutre, beat until mixed
- Add 1 1/2 cup flour, cover and let rise for 1 hour
- Add remaining flour, blend well, knead until smooth.
- Put dough in greased bowl, cover, let rise until double its size.
- Punch down, shape rolls, let rise for 1 hour,
- Bake at 400 degree F (204 degree C) for 8 mins.
