Orange and Lemon Squash

I am not sure it would have occurred to me to make squash if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was panicking about finding a way to use up a tonne of oranges and lemons. My sister brought back a sack of them from a party where she'd waitressed and, get this, the fruit was just the decoration – it wasn’t even intended to be eaten! An outrage to our puritanical sensibilities.

I’m not sure this recipe would be particularly cost effective if you had to actually buy the fruit, but the flavour of this squash is so sparkly and sunshiney and complex that it's definitely worth the money. The other issue is that it takes quite some time to zest the fruit, and a lot of time to juice it. Just this part of the procedure probably took a couple of hours, so this is an activity for a relaxed day. But in the winter there is nothing nicer than surrounding yourself with a citrusy haze. Although I admit this photo of the carnage doesn't make it look very relaxing:

Equipment: some glass bottles, funnel could be handy.

Ingredients

1kg sugar
1ltr water
Zest of 4 lemons
Zest of 4 oranges
Juice of 10 lemons
Juice of 10 oranges

1) Sterilise your bottles (you can see in the picture how many I used).
2) Put the sugar, water and all the zest into a pan and bring to the boil so that the sugar dissolves. Turn the heat down and simmer for about an hour. The liquid should become a thin syrup.
3) Add the all the juice and heat again until it is almost boiling.
4) Strain the lot through a sieve and bottle.

N.B. I am quite interested in the business of finding interesting, non-alcoholic drinks. I love the idea of the 6pm gin and tonic but I usually regret it whenever I have one - you know it means a bit fat full stop on your productive day. Sometimes that's exactly what you want but often it's nice to actually do things in the evening without feeling tired and groggy. Recently I've been drinking a lot of tonic water with Angostura Bitters but I think this squash will be an interesting addition. I also think a bottle of homemade squash is a really nice present for a teetotal mate, or anyone for that matter.