Re: INFO: sekanjabin

[Tom Brady <tbrady@nando.net>]

At 05:07 PM 6/7/96 -0400, you wrote:
>Gentle Thorns:
>        Several times Miriam Rachel has mentioned seconjubin.  'Tis a drink
>made with mint, no?  I have mint in gracious plenty and would know how this
>drink is made.  It sounds most refreshing for a summer day in Atlantia.

Greetings, good friend!
Here is yet another recipe for this drink, which I have heard referred to as
"medieval Gatorade". This is excerpted from an article on The Rialto by
Baron Dur ishJabal Bey alFarengi dating from September 1, 1994:
"(This makes a syrup that I cut 1:8 or 1:15 with water, including Pennsic
water for those still scared by false rumors.)

4 cups sukkar (sugar) and 2.5 cups water
Bring these to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 20 minutes.
Then add 1 cup RED WINE VINEGAR (and use the good stuff!). Remove from heat.
Crush FRESH LEMON BALM (a mint) and steep in the hot solution until the mint
is completely wilted. Remove and replace with more (I use as much as I can,
usually a bunch as big as my head).
Lemon balm is a perennial and may be obtained from most garden stores. It
grows like a weed.
Like most things, the better grade ingredients produce better results."

I had occasion to make up a batch of this for a feast last weekend. Here are
some notes and changes I made to this general recipe:
Not having any kind of mint growing in my yard (bummer), I was forced to buy
fresh mint at the NC State Farmers' Market. It is a matter for some
speculation that if you are running low on fresh mint, perhaps mint extract
might be used, although I would never recommend substituting mint extract
for all of the fresh mint. I'm not sure about using dried mint - might this
introduce some bitterness?
For red wine vinegar, I used Berio brand, bought at the local Kroger.
This recipe makes enough syrup for a small army - I wound up with about a
quart and a half. When you dilute on a 1:15 scale, that's a heck of a lot of
sekanjabin. People prefer varying strengths of dilution - I like it on the
weak side, but others prefer it stronger.
You might want to label the bottle to clearly state that it is a concentrate
and should not be drunk straight - although the look on someone's face who
does so can be quite entertaining.
I found one key to making sekanjabin palatable to all is to add a little
rosewater to the diluted drink - maybe 5-8 drops per half-gallon. Enough to
take the vinegar edge off, but not enough to produce an overpower rose flavor.

On a lark, I also tried to make a lime-ginger drink in a similar fashion for
the same feast. Such a drink is mentioned in Mistress Alizaunde's excellent
article "Robbing Peter to Feed Paul", which can be found at 
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/recipes/rprf.sca.feasts.html, but I was never
able to find a recipe. So I made my own.
Using the similar ratios above, but scaled down (1 cups sugar:~2/3 cups
water), I made a sugar syrup. I removed this from the heat, and added:
The grated rind of one lime (green part only - I used a potato peeler, which
probably took too much of the white pith)
The juice of one lemon
One piece of ginger about the size of two quarters stacked together, minced

I added these to the sugar syrup and steeped them for about 20 minutes, then
strained it. The resulting syrup had a definite lime and ginger flavor, but
was still too sweet to my taste. Unfortunately, I didn't have more to
experiment, but when I make up a batch of this for Pennsic, I will probably
double the amount of lime peel and juice, and maybe add a little more
ginger. Perhaps I'll try steeping longer, too, but I don't want to introduce
any off-flavors.

Regards,
Duncan
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Brady               tbrady@nando.net               SCA: Duncan MacKinnon
  See my web pages at http://www.technomancer.com/~duncan/ for pointers
       for the Society for Creative Anachronism and gay & lesbian links

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