Homemade fruit tea

A while back my family and I went to a kind of new age-y/fusion Chinese restaurant.  While the food was authentic chinese, they concentrate on creating “healthier dishes.”  We had some pretty yummy dishes like shrimp with fruits, stir fried organic mushrooms, etc.   One of the cool things that we tried there was their fruit tea.  Because the teapot was made of clear glass, you could see the beautiful chinese herbs, flowers and fruits they put in to make the tea.  It was quite tasty- tasted a bit like passion fruit juice.

I’ve had a lot of various fruits sitting around the house, along with a couple edible flowers from all my visits to Extraordinary Desserts, so I thought I would make my own fruit tea.

Ingredients: Fruit slices of your choosing, and tea bag of your choice. 

Directions: Put fruit pieces and tea bag into tea pot and add hot water.  Let simmer and then serve! If you want a more intense fruit flavor, you can put all the ingredients in a pot and let it simmer under low heat for a little bit.

I put in loquats, kumquats, pineapples, apples, tangerines, and korean pears.  I chose a Chrysanthemum tea bag as to go with the fruit and flower theme.  I also added rose petals, and some other edible flower petals.  The result was this pretty, dark orange colored tea.  I don’t have a teapot so I used a french press.  It came out pretty yummy.  I paired it with some new manju I picked up from Nijiya.  The outside is has a red bean taste, and has a jelly consistency.  Inside is filled with sweet red bean paste.