A few weeks back, some nice person at Random House sent my husband, Henry, a copy of The Vietnamese Market Cookbook by Van Tran and Anh Vu. The recipes are simple and beautiful and I’ve already made more dishes out of this book than most of my cookbooks combined. The flavors are elegant yet simple. And none of their recipes take days to make. One of my favorite recipes is on page 58. It’s for Clementine Jasmine Iced Tea. What with this world wide summer heat wave and all, I can’t stop brewing it. I’ve adapted it a bit with more clementines and the addition of passion fruit. It’s so refreshing and my favorite way to keep cool. Other than having a splash war with my toddler, of course.
Ingredients:
2 quarts of boiling water
8 jasmine tea bags
2 tablespoons of sugar (I like Demerara)
the juice of 4 clementines
the contents of 4 passion fruit
a few sprigs of mint
a tray of ice
Method:
Brew your tea in a large glass pitcher. Then remove the tea bags and stir in the sugar. Once it’s cooled, add the juices and the mint.
Pour through a sieve before serving over ice. This will eliminate passion fruit debris.
Chagrinnamon Toast 
This was so delicious, CP. I nearly drank the whole jug you made. I will be making this tomorrow.
Excellent!
Oh my goodness, that sounds so good!
It is! I highly recommend it.
This looks like summer!! I love it!!!!
Icy tropical goodness indeed!
Sounds wonderful. I love Vietnamese flavours.
Me too! Though I’ve never been to Vietnam. Something I’d like to remedy soon.
what a pretty book! This is why the world can not go digital–we need pretty books like that to touch and open and read from. Your iced tea sounds exotic and amazing. Does your daughter like?
It is such a pretty book. The recipes and photos inside are magical. Made the crab cakes for supper last night. Henry and I got into a dispute about who got the leftovers for their lunch. In the end, we went almost halfsies. Helena does not like tea yet. She’s still on only milk and water.