21 Aug Chamomile

When the world changed forever in the spring of 2020, the first and most pressing issue I was worried about was food. Not that our family wouldn’t have enough food to eat, but rather the amount of food that would go to waste as a result of the largest disruption of the food supply chain in the history of the United States. The first few weeks, when grocery store meat aisles went empty and toilet paper worth its weight in gold, I was worried for the amount of meat that would have otherwise gone to restaurants, specifically those from small local farms, unable to move their top-of-the-line meats and produce since the doors were locked and the lights went off at restaurants across the world.

So we took a chance. We signed up for our first CSA, or community supported agriculture. Essentially, it’s a “dealer’s choice” of food from local farms, and you get a box with whatever they have at a frequency that works best for you, either weekly or bi-weekly. There’s a ton of literature on these and if you’re in the Richmond area, Farm to Family has been absolutely amazing for us.

This has led to some challenging evenings in the kitchen, trying to decide what to make with whatever happens to be in the fridge at the moment. But sometimes, you get things that you’ve never seen before, and that’s when the real fun begins.

Enter chamomile. To this point, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in person before. Sure, I’ve heard of chamomile tea, but the idea that I was holding a bundle of chamomile in my hand was completely foreign to me. After doing a bit of reading, we decided it was best consumed with a cocktail, as most things are.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of sticking a fresh bundle of chamomile right into your own face before, it’s a wonderful experience and I recommend it whole-heatedly. Finding the stuff might be a pain, this is a plant that can grow wild, but as with all foraging adventures, you really have to make sure you know what you’re doing before ingesting wild plants. Unless you have health insurance, in which case the world is your mushroom garden.*

I found a recipe for chamomile-infused rye whiskey in my Death & Co cocktail book, but even that book calls for use of a dried chamomile tea, and we were using the fresh stuff. They call for the use of chamomile in a julep, which is awesome, but we’re going a more traditional route today. As it turns out, most of the flavor that makes chamomile so unique is found in the yellow center “bud” of the flower, which as it turns out, is composed of a bunch of little tiny flowers. Nature is magic.

Using fresh chamomile over dried chamomile will result in a much more mellow taste, and will lead to more fruity/apple notes. Dried chamomile will still be awesome, but the flavor will be a bit more citrus-y and a lot more intense. As a rule of thumb with infusions, you can always add more flavor in, but you can’t take it out.

Chamomile Old Fashioned

Ingredients:

2.0 fl oz chamomile-infused rye whiskey (below)
0.25 fl oz honey syrup (2:1)
2 dashes orange bitters
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Equipment/Preparation:

One “bundle” fresh chamomile, or 30-50 medium to large “flowers,” removed from stem, petals removed**
750ml-1L rye whiskey (preferably 100 proof bonded, like Old Overholt or Rittenhouse)
Funnel
Container capable of holding and transferring about 1L, like a pitcher or a large measuring cup
Mesh strainer
Mixing glass
barspoon (for stirring, a chopstick works in a pinch)
cocktail strainer
old fasioned glass

1.) Infuse the whiskey. Take the prepped chamomile and, using the funnel, place the flowers in the rye whiskey bottle. Seal, label, and shake gently a few times. Leave on the counter overnight about 8-12 hours, until the flowers have lost their color and the whiskey has become aromatic. Strain the mixture into a separate container, rinse the original bottle to remove any stray bits of chamomile, the strain back into the bottle. This bottle should keep indefinitely at room temperature.

2.) Make the cocktail. Combine your infused rye whiskey with the honey syrup, orange bitters and angostura bitters in a mixing glass. Add ice and stir vigorously for 20-30 seconds, then strain into a rocks filled with ice, preferably one large cube. Garnish with brandied cherries, or an orange swathe, or a lemon swathe, or just drink it without frills. Enjoy.

________

*Don’t be a dingus. Eating wild mushrooms is super dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing, regardless of whether or not you’re insured. But insurance helps.

**The Death & Co book calls for infusing a one liter bottle of Old Overholt (non-bonded) with a ¼ cup of loose chamomile tea for 45 minutes to an hour. Infusions with dried ingredients are an entirely different beast, and if you don’t have access to fresh chamomile, this is the move.