Butterfly Pea Flower Drink from Thailand Served Two Ways...

When I was hunting for recipes starting with the letter 'B', I got loads of stuffs and yet this simple yet exotic Thai beverage caught my eyes....

B - Butterfly Pea Flower Drink
Category : Misc

And now look at this flower before I go on with the details of the recipe....

From my garden

For the past so many years, we have been growing this creeper plant and most of the times, it grows and 'over flows' into our neighbor's garden and we are forced to trim it down.

Around here,this plant is grown for aesthetic purpose. Until I saw read about this beverage, I never even imagined it could be used in a recipe!!

This flower is know by the following names...

Botanical name - Clitoria ternatea and belong to the Fabaceae family.
English names - Butterfly pea, Cordon pea, blue pea,mussel shell climber, pigeon wings, etc
Tamil - Sangi pu / Asngu pushpam
Malayalam - Shanku Pushpam
Hinid- Aparajit
Bengali - Aparajita
Kannada- Nagar Hedi
Sanskrit - Vishadoshagni

This is said to be used in Ayurvedic medicine! It is also used a coloring agent - a natural food color / dye in Thailand and other Asian countries.

This flower got the name - Clitoria ternatea, as it resembles the female body part and is hence used to treat infertility, sexual ailments, menstrual problems, gonorrhea etc.

Before going to the absolutely simple recipe, it is very essential to select flowers that you are sure comes from a good source,meaning, no pesticide etc have been used.Best if you can use home grown ones...

Since this is a very simple 'recipe' , I am sharing two ways of making this drink that has different flavors...

Now to make this drink, you can use fresh flowers as shown above or used dried ones. When you have loads of these flowers in your garden, dry them and store for future use.

Dried butterfly pea Flower

I used:

Recipe Source:Pranee's Thai Kitchen

Fresh butterfly pea flowers
Hot water - 1 cup
Honey to taste

Steep the flowers in hot water for 10 minutes or till the flowers turn pale and the water turns blue.Add honey to taste and serve chilled.

This recipe can also be used as a dye in your dishes...

You can add a little bit of lemon juice and watch it turn to a beautiful violet.Can you see it is changing color below the watermark!

And now, it has fully changed color! Lemon juice , due to its acidity, is the reason for this color change...

Now for the second recipe

I used:

Tender coconut water- 2 cup
Fresh flowers- 10 numbers
Basil seeds-1/4 teaspoon, soaked in 1/8 cup water

Soak the flowers in tender coconut water for a few hours and refrigerate till the flowers turn pale. Strain and serve immediately with a little of the soaked basil seeds

If you haven't noticed yet, the color os different in the two methods. The one prepared with tender coconut water is more darker and I loved this color over the other one...