Butterfly Pea Flowers

No, not butterfly pee flowers, PEA flowers.

You can find these vines dotted with a multitude of indigo-colored flowers growing wild all over Chiang Mai. Despite their abundance, I don't believe I've ever seen, let alone eaten, a single butterfly pea.

The beautiful flowers, however, are used extensively in the Thai kitchen. Fresh, you can find them adorning plates as an edible garnish. Dried, they are steeped in water to create a deep-blue caffeine free herbal tea, which is very popular here.

Yesterday afternoon we stumbled across Asa Vegan Kitchen and, after browsing the menu, decided to have dinner there. The most interesting item on the menu was the Butterfly Pea Curry, which consisted of pumpkin and young coconut meat cooked in a traditional green curry infused with butterfly pea flowers.

The resulting dish was as delicious to behold as it was to eat. The flowers tinted the curry and coconut milk to a pale sky-blue color, but had no real impact on the flavour of the dish.

I'm not usually one to eat or drink blue concoctions (unless blueberries are involved) but this dish was so good we vowed to return for seconds one day soon.Les mer