From our friend C.H. -
Butterfly pea flower – ดอกอัญชัน – is widely used by Thais to color food. It also has great medicinal value. Tasted ok too, but I think I prefer my cut flowers in a vase.
Here is a story about the flower I
found: What is that flower behind your
ear? นั้นดอกอะไรอยู่หลังใบหูของคุณ. In a Thai village, the answer might be that
is is a jasmine, hibiscus or butterfly pea flower. You often see women or men in Thai villages
wearing flowers behind their ears on special occasions..a blue butterfly pea
flower.
In addition to wearing a blue
butterfly pea flower - ดอกอัญชัน (dok anchan) or Clitoria ternatea
– behind your ear while working in a garden, it has properties as a Thai
culinary flower. Butterfly pea is an
annual vine that is native to the land in SE Asia near the equator. Thai’s love doc anchan for its beautiful, unique
looks as well as for its culinary uses as a food coloring and edible
flower. Some use dok anchan in their Thai
cooking, shredding it into a fine ribbon and adding it to rice salad, making a
tea or adding blue color extract to steamed jasmine rice. Many hotels in Thailand greet guests with a
welcome drink made from dok anchan. But above
and beyond all these uses, ancestors recognize it for its medicinal benefits,
which include its anti-depression, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer
properties. The blue concentrate added
to hair products also promotes healthy hair growth.
The vines can produce many flowers a
day. The pigment in the flowers come
from anthocyanins, and has long been widely used in Thai and Malaysian cuisines
for blue or purple food coloring for butterfly pea sticky rice. In Thailand, any foods prepared with shades
of blue, purple or pink come from dok anchan.
In addition, SE Asia uses the flowers in traditional Ayurvedic medicine,
a system of traditional medicine native to the Indian subcontinent and a form
of alternative medicine for the treatment of various ailments.
In the U.S. you can mail-order
homegrown organic air-dried butterfly pea flowers from Esty.com and
Alibab.com.
Step
by Step Instructions for making blue and purple Butterfly Pea color extracts –
1.
Steep
12 dried or fresh butterfly flowers in 1 cup of boiling water
2.
15
minutes later or when no color is left in the petal, strain the liquid and
discard the flowers. You will get deep,
blue water.
3.
Add
a few drops of lime juice. This will
change ph level and you will get purple water.
