There's a saying you may have heard about the Chinese and their relationship to food that goes, "They'll eat anything that moves except for bicycles." If that's the case, there isn't be much difference between the Thai and the Chinese as both will eat just about anything.
In the olden days when our ancestors lived nearby nature, people learned what was edible through trial and error. Through this process, they turned their experiences into local wisdom.
Although more people live in cities today, our ancestors' knowledge of local food and agriculture endures in our culinary practices.
In this column, I want to talk about edible flowers and leaves in Thai cuisine.
Many Thai dishes use flowers and leaves as ingredients. Some can be eaten raw, while some are boiled and fried.
Those that can be eaten raw are usually served with spicy dishes such as kaeng pet (spicy curry) and yum (Thai salad) to help cope with the powerful spiciness, while balancing out all the flavours.
Some examples of leaves and flowers in this category are olive leaves, mango leaves, gandaria leaves, kaffir lime leaves, Asiatic pennywort, hoary basil, horse tamarind leaves, wildbetal leafbush, banana blossoms, carpel of mamiew pomerac and butterfly pea flower.
Those can be eaten boiled or steamed are normally served as side dishes for nam phrik (chilli dipping sauce) and nam pla wan (sweet fish sauce) or put in kaeng som (sour soup with mixed veggies), tom kha gai (Thai coconut soup) and kaeng jued (plain soup).
Some examples of leaves and flowers in this category are agasta, sesbania flowers, neem flowers, banana blossoms, pumpkin flowers, coccinia grandis and pandanus leaves.
Steamed sesbania flowers can be eaten with ground coconut and palm sugar, while boiled pandanus leaves are commonly used in Thai desserts.
Thais eat fried flowers and leaves with only certain dishes such as khanom jeen nam phrik (Thai rice noodle with peanut sauce) and khanom jeen nam ya (Thai rice noodle with fish curry).
Fried polyscias leaves and fried sueda maritima leaves are commonly eaten with khanom jeen nam phrik, while fried ixora, fried antigonon leptopus, fried bougaville and fried white desert rose are usually eaten with khanom jeen nam ya.
Sadly, these fried flowers are rarely found in Thai restaurants nowadays. Besides the fact these are difficult to forage, many people do not like the taste.
There are also inedible flowers such as orchids, jasmines and roses that are used in Thai cooking. We only use their scent and colour to make food look more fancy and appetising.
Roses and orchids are also often used as decorative objects in dishes. Jasmine-scented water is a main ingredient of the royal dish khao chae (dry-cooked rice in cold water, eaten with condiments).
It's important to mention that using flowers like orchids, jasmines and roses as decoration could be dangerous as these are mostly grown commercially in farms using large amounts of pesticides and hazardous chemical fertilisers.
So having these popular flowers on our plates may not always be the best idea.
Instead of using potentially harmful commercial flowers to decorate your food, I suggest using local ones grown naturally.
Many of these flowers can be just as beautiful and colourful as imported ones.
For example, if you want to use white flowers, blossoms of Solanum torvum or apple guava flowers are good choices. For yellow colours, you can use bitter gourd flowers. As for red, you can use pomegranate flowers.
However, remember that these plants cannot reap fruits if you collect their flowers. If you actually expect to bear fruits, you may have to choose flowers from plants that are rich in pollen and nectar such as white popinac, piper sarmentosum, lotus, agasta and hibiscus.
There are more edible species of plants out there than you may realise, alongside plenty of flowers that can be used for decorative purposes.
Just be careful that the flowers you purchase are not toxic and won't spoil your appetite.
