Camomila Studio

Desserts · Plate V

Star anise

Illicium verum

An evergreen tree from southwest China and Vietnam, with smooth elliptic leaves clustered towards the tips of the twigs. Its solitary flowers are pink or crimson, with many narrow tepals.

The fruit is a star, nearly always with eight points: each one is a boat-shaped carpel holding a single glossy brown seed. It is picked green, before it ripens, and turns reddish brown as it dries in the sun.

It smells of anise because it shares the same main aroma, anethole, although the two are not related: common anise is a herb in the fennel family. In Chinese it is called bajiao, “eight horns”. It has a very similar Japanese relative, Illicium anisatum, which is not used in cooking.

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