Watermelon Sherbet Dew 西瓜西米露

Personally, I don't hate summer so long as the heat does not find my skin. =P Summer means I'll get a taste of my tropical homeland! =D

There's watermelon for Summer!! Long live shortlived Summer!

YES! Summer is so short ( read ' short ' quickly! ) in Nagano, it lives like a fly! We have no time to lose, it's like attending a buffet style fruit bar with a specified time limit ( Do you know? Some buffet restaurants in Japan actually impose a time limit like an hour to 90mins? )

（～～；）けち。。。 Stingy...　

Back to watermelon. I was watching TV the other day and suddenly slapped awake of a memory. It featured a recipe of a dessert, that I used to love so much when I was in my teens!


...........

It must have been more than 10 years since I had my last... I was a perfectly slim and ' no sugar ' girl back then, dad often had to crack his head to wheedle me into having some. It took long enough until a star stall began its hot business. It was the stall's 西瓜西米露 that taught me : desserts ARE pleasurable. =)


It's haarrdd to translate from the Chinese expression, I'll let it be called ' Watermelon Sherbet Dew ' (~~;). Anyway, the name tells it all, there's ICY WATERMELON SHERBET!





What I've enjoyed in the past, were mouth-sized balls of icy watermelon sherbet, in cold and sweet milky mixture. There were slippery sagos, some corn toppings, all in a decent bowl size and it was merely for a dollar! My family had their sweeter choices though. I was stuck with this until we moved to our present home, and we patronized the stall no more because of the distance...


I really wonder if the stall still exists now... it was such a popular stall and the talk of the neighbourhood back then...




The recipe suggested milk instead of coconut milk though. We can always decide a different arrangement, can't we? ;) Anyway, I ran the first trial by using soya milk, which is gentle with my tummy. The result was close, or not so close, thanks to the absence of coconut milk. Oh but it's so expensive here, I guess I'll just put up with having none. I would have added some sagos if I have any on hand, next time perhaps. ;) I couldn't care thinking about other likeable toppings, to relive that teenage moment was what's all on my mind...

Go taint the milk with watermelon's juice, it gives a pretty hue of pink. =) The color isn't so obvious in my pictures though.





So, ahhh... here you go, a fragment of what I used to love when I was in Singapore...






Recipe for Watermelon Sherbet Dew


Note : Estimate the required amount, it shouldn't be too difficult. Just be careful with the amount of milk used. There may be an overflow when sherbet is added.



Watermelon

Milk/Soy milk

Coconut milk ( optional )

Condensed milk

Corn

Any other topping that you may like to have. ( eg. sago ) They may be agreeable.


1. Prepare watermelon into mouth-size pieces. Cut them into cubes, or you may prefer shaped cutters. Freeze them for about 2 hours to achieve sherbet state. Know your fridge and determine the required time. You won't like having watermelon hails instead.


2. There must be scraps of watermelon after obtaining the mouth-size pieces. Squash the flesh to get juice out from the fruit. Pour the juice into the milk/soy milk to get a desired nice pink. You may like to squash a little more fruit in order to achieve a deeper pink.


3. Sweeten milk/soy milk with condensed milk, check the taste after adding 1 tablespoon each time, until desired sweetness is achieved. As the sherbet hardly increases the sweetness of the milk mixture, go sweeten it to your heart's content. Rememeber, it's a dessert. Get a good chill for the milk mixture. Chill, not freeze.


4. Get corn ready and put aside.


5. To serve : ( Optional : add little coconut milk to mixture to boost the flavour, stir well ). Drop sherbets into mixture and top with corns, ready to go. Serve quickly because the sherbet melts readily within the mixture.


Huh? Did I hear ' What about the remaining watermelon then... '?

Have a great weekend!!

P/S : Anybody staying at Tampines, near the 100 plus market?