The Color Purple

The weather has finally turned pleasant here in Boston after several days of shirt-wringing heat. The trouble with alcohol when it’s this hot is that it’s hard to sip delicately when what you really want is a lot of cold liquid, very quickly, in your face. Soda is, let’s face it, kind of gross, and water is necessary to life and all that, but still, you know—water.

Enter chicha morada, the national non-alcoholic beverage of Peru (sorry, Inca Kola). Sweet, pleasantly spiced, and rich purple in color, chicha is made from Andean purple corn and has been a mainstay of Peruvian cuisine since before the establishment of the Inca Empire. It’s an all-ages drink that you’ll find served everywhere from street carts in Lima’s city center to upscale restaurants in Miraflores. Best served so cold that it’s only barely clinging to a solid state, chicha is an ideal summer drink when you’re losing enough moisture through your armpits that you don’t want to add to the dehydration by drinking alcohol.

You can find chicha morada in bottles either online or if you happen to have a Peruvian market nearby, but even if you just want to try a little to see if you like it, I urge you to make it from scratch. I have never tasted bottled chicha that even comes close to the crisp, spicy quality of freshly made. Even many cheap restaurants in Peru make their own. Make up a batch now, while the heat is only partially melting your brain and you can still stand to have the stove on for an hour.

Chicha Morada

1 15-oz. package dried purple corn

Rind from one pineapple

1 granny smith apple, cored and cubed

1 cinnamon stick

1 tablespoon whole cloves

12 cups water

1 cup sugar

Juice of one lime

Juice of half a lemon

1. Place corn, pineapple rind, apple, cinnamon, cloves, and water in a large pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 50 minutes.

2. Remove from heat, add sugar, lime, and lemon, and stir to combine.

3. Allow to cool, then strain to remove all solids. Chill thoroughly and enjoy.

Ah, Youth

I’m always intrigued by cocktails that look on paper like I would hate them. Almost inevitably, these seem like they’d be far too sweet, usually due to the combination of multiple liqueurs, often with at least one being an aggressive flavor like green chartreuse or St. Germain. So I always appreciate when someone shares a drink like this and specifically calls out the fact that it sounds gross but isn’t. Such is the case with the Jeunesse, from a 1948 book by Maurice Bonnet (who is neither the identically named photographer nor the similarly named astrophysicist Roger-Maurice Bonnet), recently highlighted by David Wondrich in a round-up for The Daily Beast. When I first made this last week, my wife took a sip and declared that it was “the way you wish a mimosa tasted.” In any case, it is delightfully bitter, placing the Suze’s gentian root in the starring role. It’s not particularly high proof, either, and with its strong orange notes, it could easily sub in for a mimosa at brunch.

Jeunesse

2 oz Cointreau or Grand Marnier

1 oz Suze liqueur

1 oz lemon juice

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled coupe. Express the oils from an orange peel and discard.