Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons dehydrated chamomile flowers
- 1 tablespoon finely chopped dehydrated apricot
- 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
- 1 teaspoon coriander seeds, crushed
- 1 teaspoon dehydrated orange zest
- 2 cups boiling water
Instructions
- Crack the fennel and coriander in a mortar before anything else happens. A whole seed wears a shell built to survive a winter in soil, and hot water will not get through it in a quarter of an hour.
- Chop the apricot to pieces no bigger than a grain of rice. It is the slowest thing in the pot by a distance, and surface area is the only lever you have over it.
- Brew this one in a pot rather than a cup. There are five things steeping and they need room to move; packed into a small basket, half of them never wet through.
- Add the boiling water and put a lid on for fifteen minutes. Cracked seed carries volatile oil that will leave with the steam if you give it the chance.
- Strain it, then eat the apricot pieces rather than binning them. They come out plump and faintly aniseed, and they are the most interesting thing in the pot.
- Blend the dry ingredients ahead of time but keep the jar dark and work through it within six months. The apricot decides this: dried fruit sitting against dried leaf slowly hands its moisture over, and a blend that has gone tacky should be made up fresh.
