Horchata - Make Your Own Refreshing Summer Drink

I've been posting a series of "aguas" which are lightly sweetened drinks the Mexicans use to complement their spicy meals.  The "agua de sandia" is a wonderful watermelon flavored drink and the "agua de melon" is a delicious dring made from cantaloupe its seeds.  However, perhaps the most famous mexican drink is made from rice--horchata!

Horchata is actually made in many places around the world from different nuts, grains, or tubers such as ground almonds, sesame seeds, rice, barley, or tigernuts.  Horchata was a drink that originated in Valencia Spain and was likely originally made from barley, but they switched to the use of tigernuts (a kind of tuber) sometime during the period of Muslim presence in Valencia (from the eighth to thirteenth centuries).  The drink travelled with the conquistadores to the Americas and is made throughout Latin America.  Although it is made from various seeds or nuts throughout Latin America, in Mexico horchata is made of rice, sometimes with vanilla and always with cinnamon.

Here's how to make delicious Mexican horchata:

• 1 cup White Rice
• 4 cups Water
• 1/2 cup Milk
• 3/4 cup Sugar
• 1 Tbsp Cinnamon - ground
• 1 Tbsp Vanilla

Put rice and water in a blender and pulse until the rice is well broken up.  Leave on the counter for 3 hours or overnight (you can speed this up by partially boiling the rice in the water then blending it while it's hot, and letting it cool to room temperature).  Strain out the rice grains with a very tight strainer or a cheesecloth.  Mix the remaining ingredients together and add them to the rice water.  Blend again to incorporate the cinnamon.  Serve chilled with ice cubes.  It's very refreshing on a hot day or with spicy food!