Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Pinterest Illustrations by INNA ANTIG Fruits are a major ingredient in mixing a cocktail and sometimes using the freshest ingredients can make a whole lot of difference in your glass of an ice cold drink. The Philippines is home to a lot of tropical and exotic fruits, and while you’re used to eating them fresh or adding them to your healthy juicing, your usual market fruit buy can also turn into a good old negroni or an ice cold daiquiri. We’ve listed down 10 fresh fruit ingredients that you can find in your local market and use in your cocktail concoctions. 1. DAYAP Dayap Dayap or key lime is not to be mistaken with calamansi. Though they look the same at first glance, dayap is slightly bigger (sometimes almost as big as a green lemon) and harder to the touch. It has more seeds, a stronger aroma, and a unique flavor compared to other citrus fruits. It tastes sour but it’s very refreshing; it almost seems like there’s a minty coolness to it. The rind of dayap or its juice is sometimes the secret ingredient to leche flan as it adds a unique flavor to every bite. Now, to use it as a refreshing drink might get very addicting as the aroma is invigorating. To make a glass of cold dayap juice, slice and juice up at least five to six pieces (it’s harder to juice than a calamansi so you have to use a juicer or spoon out the juices from the fruit). Add water and sugar to a glass filled with ice. You may also add soda water or Sprite for a fizzy taste. For a more intese flavor, make ice cubes from the concoction and use it to cool the drink. For cocktails, try this ingredient to replace citrus in Moscow Mule, mojito, mint julep, and caipirinha. 2. Guava Guava Guava is a common fruit-bearing tree in the Philippines. In some provinces, almost every home has a guava tree sprouting somewhere in the backyard. The leaves are aromatic when crushed and can be made into an herbal tea. Guava tea leaves can be used in treating stomach problems, and there are claims that it can also treat chronic diseases like diabetes and even cancer. Depending on the variety, the guava fruit comes in different sizes (pear-shaped, round, and oblong), and it can be eaten ripe or unripe. When the fruit is still young, the skin is green and the young flesh of the guava fruit is white. The skin changes to yellow green when it ripens and the flesh turns a soft pink. Ripe guavas have a strong sweet floral-like scent that reminds you of the tropics. The ripe guavas are best to use for a cold juice or cocktail. Peel off the skin with a knife to expose the pink flesh, slice it into pieces and juice it up using a blender. Strain the liquid so you can take out the seeds, as they are very hard to chew. The creamy juice can be mixed with sugar and a little water. Add ice for a tasty guava juice. You can also make guava syrup that can be used for cocktails or mixed with iced tea. Boil the peeled and sliced guava in water, strain, and press the guava flesh through the sieve. Return the strained liquid to the pan and add sugar. Boil until the liquid is reduced by half. You can use the syrup in tropical cocktail recipes. For other cocktail inspirations, use guava for daiquiris, margaritas, and mojitos. Guava juice also mixes with gin, vodka, or Malibu rum. 3. KALUMPIT Kalumpit Kalumpit is a tree with berry-like fruits at least three centimeters wide in size. The fruit is green when young, then turns to red as it ripens, but the best time to harvest it is when the color has turned dark red, and the fruit is soft and starting to shrivel like raisins. The fruit can be hard to find because it is seasonal, but when you get some, it can be worth the wait as there are so many delicious drinks you can make with it. The fruit is really sour if you eat it raw, but you can coat it with salt to make it more bearable or sugar if you have a sweet tooth. Since it is rare due to its short bearing season it can be a stored longer if made into a jam or minatamis na kalumpit. To prepare kalumpit sugar, soak the fruit overnight, then boil in water and sugar and let it simmer until it has a jam-like consistency and most of the skin has fallen off from the seeds. Cooling the concoction makes for a good ice candy or drizzle it in shaved ice to enjoy. The syrup also makes for a good negroni. Just mix Campari, gin, and replace Vermouth with the kalumpit syrup. 4. CALAMANSI Calamansi Calamansi is a small citrus fruit locally found in the Philippines. It’s easy to find in groceries and in the marketplace. There are so many uses for it in the Pinoy kitchen, including mixing the juice with soy sauce as a side dip for fried food. Calamansi is a great source of Vitamin C and is good as a juice whether hot or cold. It may also be used as ingredient in ice cream, pastries, even candies. Since it’s Buwan ng Wika and we wanted to focus on local ingredients, DrinkManila has prepared calamansi recipes for cocktails. See recipes for Calimanly and Gin Calamansi. 5. MANGO Mango Just like calamansi, mangoes are usually in season all year round in the Philippines and there are a lot of varieties to choose from. The fruit is native to southern Asia and in the Philippines. Carabao mango is one of the popular ones; it’s also the variety exported to other countries. Mango may be eaten green with salt or bagoong. When ripe, it can be used for juices, ice cream, smoothies, pastries, jams, and fruit bars. Mango is also a good ingredient for your happy hour tropical cocktail. It can be used for sangria, margarita, martini, michelada, or any tiki style cocktail recipe. 6. GUYABANO Guyabano Guyabano fruit is spiky on the outside but very white and soft on the inside. The flesh of the fruit has a unique sweet-sour flavor that almost tastes like strawberry and pineapple. The guyabano tree has both nutritional and medicinal values from the bark, leaves, roots, fruit, and seeds; almost nothing is wasted. The fruit alone is rich in Vitamin C and B vitamins (niacin, thiamin, and riboflavin). To juice the fruit, remove the seeds from the flesh, combine with two cups of water, and put in the blender. Blend the fruit until pureed. You can drink it straight or add sugar and lime juice and serve cold over ice. For happy hour, guyabano makes a refreshing summer drink. You can add citrus juices with guyabano and mix it with gin, vodka, or Malibu rum and serve with ice. 7. TAMARIND Tamarind Tamarind or sampalok is a pod-like fruit with a sour green flesh when unripe and sweet brown soft flesh when matured. When it is still sour, the fruit is popularly used for sinigang in the Philippines and other dishes for Indian, Mexican, and Thai cuisines. For its sweet notes, it is made into candies, jams, nectar, syrup, and concentrate. You can boil the unripe fruit (skin and all) and strain when cooled to get its juices. To create syrup, simply boil the pureed juice with sugar. As a syrup it can be diluted in water and served over ice to enjoy. For cocktail recipes, you can use tamarind as ingredient for a Bourbon Sidecar or whisky sour, or spike it with chili for a spicy margarita. 8. KAMIAS Kamias You don’t usually see kamias dishes or juices in the city, though there are some gourmet kitchens that use the fruit. In the provinces, the fruit is often used as sour broth for seafood, pork, beef sinigang, or fish pinangat. The kamias is a small tree that grows five to 12 meters high, the fruit is green and cylindrical and weirdly sprouts from the trunk of its tree. To enjoy as a drink, kamias can be juiced or blended. Sugar can be added for a refreshing ice cold drink. For cocktail recipes, you can use the juice to replace lemon or citrus limes as ingredient. It can also be made into a syrup, mixed with other sour fruits and combined with gin, vodka, or whisky. 9. DUHAT Duhat Duhat is a fruit bearing evergreen tropical tree. It only bears fruit during the rainy season so it can be hard to find in the market whole year round. The duhat fruit is 1 to 2 cm long, ovoid to circular, and grows in clusters from the branches of the tree. The skin of the fruit is thin and green when still young but turns dark purple to almost black when ripe. The pulp is white, soft and juicy with a sour, astringent and sometimes acrid taste. It has one seed which you should avoid chewing, as it is slightly bitter. It can be eaten raw, or coated with salt to mask the sour taste. In some parts of the country, it is made into wine and produces a distinct tannin taste. For a refreshing drink, it can be peeled from the seed and processed in a blender combined with ice and sugar. Some make mocktails for a fancier drink, just add water, grenadine, lemon juice, sugar, and little salt to the blended pulp. You can garnish this with mint leaves and serve in an ice cold glass rimmed with salt. For cocktails, the sweetened blended pulp can be spiked with tequila. Add citrus (preferably lime) or orange to sweeten, and for an extra kick, put in some pieces of red chili. Once you have the blended juice, you can experiment (depending on your preference) by adding gin or vodka, liqueur, and citrus. 10. SANTOL Santol Santol fruit is yellowish, round with the size of a tennis ball (though some are bigger). When you cut inside the santol fruit, there is a white juicy tissue covering four to five seeds. The white fruit tissue can be sour or sweet depending on the ripeness. The inner skin surrounding the fruit is flesh in color and tastes sour to acrid. It can be eaten raw with salt or used for cooking with sinigang or any sour broth to replace tamarind. In some gourmet kitchens, it is made into a marmalade and the peels into a candy. To extract the juice to use as a drink, peel the skin and boil the entire fruit with water. After boiling let cool and take out the seeds, then you can put it back to the pan and add sugar to create santol syrup. The syrup can be added with water and served in ice for a refreshing sweet and sour drink. In Thailand, they make a salty rum cocktail concoction with santol by combining the syrup with muddled ginger, lime, rum, shaken with ice and served in a glass rimmed with ice and topped with soda. The next time you go to the market, head to the fruit section and see what recipes you can come up with using the above mentioned fruits. You may share your own recipes with us by sending them to mail@drinkmanila.com and we will share them with our readers.