From My Kitchen

I’m not actually going to give you a recipe for making a fruit salad, because lets face it all that involves is washing some fruit, chopping it and ta-daaaaa! You have a fruit salad. What I am going to record here is how to make Chilli syrup, because this elevates the fruit salad to something a bit more special. While you’re at it, double up on the base syrup and you will have made sugar syrup to use in cocktails – it lasts for absolutely ages in a clean jam jar, so there’s really no reason not to. This quantity makes a jam jar full of chilli syrup which serves lots, you only need a slurp per bowl.

Ingredients

1 cup caster sugar

0.5 cup water

1 small red chilli

0.25 tsp ground ginger

or 1 tsp chopped fresh ginger

Juice of 0.5 lime

Handful ripped mint leaves

Lime wedges to serve

Optional Greek yogurt

Method

1. Put the sugar and water in a small saucepan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves – give it a stir every now and then to help it on it’s way.
2. Cut through the chilli lengthwise through the red part only so that it stays intact and drop that into the syrup, along with the ginger, lime juice, and around half of the mint leaves.
3. Let it bubble away for 5 minutes until it reduces in volume a bit. You might want to fish out the chilli part way through depending on how hot you want it to be.
4. Strain, pour into a jar and leave to cool.
5. When you’re ready to eat, add the remaining mint leaves to your prepared fruits, then drizzle on some of the syrup.
6. Serve with Greek yogurt if desired, and an extra wedge of lime.

Note: If you make double the syrup you can save half (before adding the aromatics) for cocktail making. You’re welcome.