Last dinner in Madrid - Cafestic

》Club Sandwich
》Caipirinha

^Caipirinha, pronouced kai-pee-reen-ya, is Brazil’s national cocktail! It’s made with limes, sugar, ice and cachaça, a Brazilian distilled liquor made from the fermentation of raw sugarcane juice.

5 whole limes
3 tbsp sugar
3/4 cup cachaça
ice to taste

Juice 3 of the limes and set aside - you'll want about a 1/3 of a cup of juice, give or take.
Cut the other 2 limes in 8 pieces each.
Add the sugar and the lime pieces to a cup and muddle until you've juiced all the little pieces and they're nicely combined with the sugar.
Add the lime juice and the cachaça to the muddled limes and stir gently to dissolve the sugar - approx. 2 minutes.
Fill 2 cups with ice, and top them with caipirinha.

^Now, story time!! Some time around 1918, the Portuguese were mixing strong liquor with garlic, lemon and honey as a home remedy to treat colds. Same thing was being done in Brazil, where the liquor of choice was the cachaça. At some point, the honey was replaced with sugar because of the abundance of sugarcane plantations, and the garlic just stopped being added. The drink became so popular that people started to drink it at parties for fun, rather than just to treat sickness. And just like that, meus amigos, the classic caipirinha was born!

Legend also says that the adaptation from “remedy” to cocktail took place in the rural area of the state of São Paulo, where people are known as caipira, inspiring the name of the drink. The name caipirinha, which basically means hillbilly, is the word caipira in the diminutive form.

Saúde!!Read more