Damien mixes: “Melon Gimlet”

© Damien Guichard

Another month, another drink! As I look at my calendar with only a few days left before my holiday in my hometown in the south of France, staring at the window, idle, dreaming of warm days by the pool, the inspiration became all obvious: cantaloupe. Nothing tastes more of summer to me than the juicy bite of a fresh, ripe cantaloupe.

Move away disco drinks and industrial flavours, today we are about to make an all-natural melon based drink, that will tickle your taste buds! Have you ever had cooked melon? Exactly - melon is a fruit whose vibrant aroma does not do well once heated: just like cucumber, watermelon etc. So how are we planning on processing this fruit in an interesting and modern way while keeping its aromatic integrity intact?

We could blend it with rum and hope for the best but, as you are probably aware by now, I like things tasty and clear. For this drink we will be using the Pectinex method again. Pectinex is an enzyme that breaks up the pectine naturally found in fruits. Pectine naturally binds the fruit and its juice together, pectinex is there to neutralise the pectine, thus making it easier to extract clear juice out of our cantaloupe. 

© Damien Guichard

The method is pretty simple:

• Chop your cantaloupe and weigh it.
• For every 1 000 g of fruit, add 2 g of pectinex.
• Add it to a food processor.
• Blend and heat up at 37C for 15min. Why 37C? Because it is cool enough to preserve the wonderful fresh fragrance of our melon but still warm enough to activate the pectinex.
• Filter through a coffee filter.
• Profit.

Recipe for a "Melon Gimlet"