Spiced Mint Lime Cooler

For bright sunny days and pleasant winter days!

Winter in Vizag is pretty unpredictable; in the sense some days it's too cold that I see myself wearing sweater and other days it is pretty warm but not hot. Today is one such warm day and it's pretty sunny outside. Now that I am having plenty of fresh lime at my disposal, I could easily resist the unopened bottle of thumbs up and go for a fresh lime drink!

Now the challenge was how to make it special. I spent some time "researching" in my refrigerator to see what I have and finally came up with ginger, mint leaves and yes, fresh yellow juicy lime :-) So here is a quick lime drink that can also  be replicated as a decent cocktail (with vodka or gin).

Ingredients

Fresh lime - 1 medium, juiced and one slice for garnishing

Mint leaves - 2 tablespoon, finely chopped

Ginger - 1 inch piece, crushed and juice extracted

Pepper - 1 pinch, freshly ground

Sugar - 1 1/2 - 2 teaspoon (or as per taste)

Salt - 1/2 teaspoon (can ignore if you do not prefer salt and sweet)

Water - 1/4 glass

Soda - 3/4 glass, chilled

Preparation

1. In a small mixing bowl, add ginger extract and mint leaves along with lime juice. Add pepper powder, sugar, salt and water; give it a nice swirl (my bowl had handle and hence it was easy)

Serving

2. Using a filter, pour this into a serving glass. Fill up the glass with soda.

3. Garnish with lemon slice, probably a few mint leaves and a stirrer.

Improvisation Ideas:

Next time I might add chaat masala to make it masala lime cooler! :-)