WetLeather Recipe Database - food for bikers

Name:	Caipirinha	Contributor:	John Gillis
Description:	caipirinha = nectar of the gods	Posted:	1993-12-13
Key words:	caipirinha, lime, pinga	Category:	Beverages
ID:	14	Updated:	2006-01-09 16:12:54
Ingredients:	a largish whole lime, or maybe two small ones a handful of finely crushed ice 2 Tbsp finely ground sugar Pinga
Preparation:	OK, here is how I was taught to make it. They even let me practice a lot and I never had complaints, other than "it needs a little more Pinga". They liked it VERY strong. The following recipe is very rough. You need to adjust to taste. We never actually measured anything, it was just sort of by feel/look/taste. Start with a largish whole lime, or maybe two small ones. It's a feel thing. With a knife, peel about half of the skin off. We did this by making stripes down the length of the lime, from top to bottom, leaving alternating skinned and unskinned stripes. Cut the lime in half, lengthwise, and remove the core/center stringy stuff. Further cut the lime into about eighths, lengthwise, and then cut all those in half crossways. You want lots of small even lime pieces. Place all that into a flat bottomed wide approximately 6 to 8 oz drinking glass. With a flat-bottomed wooden utensil, crush the lime pieces to make lots of juice. Add about a handful of finely crushed ice to the glass. Add about 2 Tbsp of finely ground sugar to the juice and crushed ice. Brazilians like it sweet, so you might want to add even more than this. Add Pinga, pouring over the utensil you used to crush the limes, to get all the juice into the glass. Fill the glass fairly full, but so that you can still shake it. In Brazil, they then took another identical glass, placed it rim-to-rim with the one you filled, and shook the two glasses so the stuff went from glass to glass. To prove their prowess at making this drink, none would spill. Here, I just cover the glass with my hand and shake until my hand freezes. Finally, use your hand, as I do, to mostly cover the glass as you pour from the mixing glass to serving glasses (about two), filtering most of the lime bits and ice. You want a few lime pieces and a little ice in each serving glass. You want the drink very cold, pretty limey, sweet, and very, very strong. We would make about two good drinks, and two or three people would share a drink. If you drank a whole drink yourself, you really felt it.
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