Not only showing off their beauty, many flowers also incarnate into cuisine, creating delicate and nutritious dishes. As a result, Vietnamese cuisine, which is rich in identity, has become extremely rich and quintessential. Flowers used to prepare Vietnamese dishes have many species, depending on the geographical area and the farming practices of each region. Flowers are grown, flowers are wild, flowers are found in all three regions of the North, Central and South. The North called flowers, the Central and the South called cotton. Water lily, natural lily flowers, squash flowers, loofah flowers, banana flowers, chives flowers, crazy flowers, sua flowers, melon flowers… Here are the dishes made from unique flowers in Vietnam.
In the Northwest mountains, every February and March, Ban flowers bloom in the forest. The women often pick Ban flower and sell it at the market as a clean vegetable or bring it home to process into unique dishes. With the creativity and ingenuity of people, there have been many dishes made from extremely attractive flowers.
To have dishes from flowers must go through many stages. After picking flowers, you pick up the petals and pistils, wash them gently, then blanch them in hot water, then process them into many different dishes.
Processing Northwest flower dishes
Hoa ban can be used to make vegetable salad, salad mannequin or bamboo shoots are very delicious and attractive. In addition, flowers can also be pounded and mixed with minced meat, stuffed with fish, grilled chicken … forming a delicious, very attractive dish.
With sticky rice (often called ban do), people often choose the newly bloomed flowers, wash them and put them in the cooked sticky rice bowl. When eating, the food is dotted with diagonal occipitals (a traditional Thai condiment). Leaves and flowers have a fleshy, sweet, faint aroma mixed with the smell of fragrant sticky rice, which is an extremely interesting experience.
Hoa Ban salad is not like other regions, often with peanuts, lemon and sour taste. The “standard” Hoa Ban mannequin seasoning must be the fermented sauce of Thai people and crushed neighbors. With a sophisticated way of processing, Hoa ban mannequin is often made when there are precious guests at home.
flowers triangular circuit
Buckwheat flowers are abundant in Cao Bang, Lao Cai, especially Ha Giang. In the northernmost land of Vietnam, at the end of autumn, when the weather starts to turn cold, flowers are blooming.
Fascinated with thousands of purple flowers, few people know that the seeds of the flower can be used as ingredients to prepare dishes. At the end of the season, buckwheat flower seeds are harvested and dried, partly used to brew the famous pink mi yeast, and partly milled to make the famous buckwheat cake.
Cooking buckwheat flowers
From the buckwheat buckwheat seeds smaller than a pea, it is ground into a very fine powder. Then mix the flour with water into a flexible dough, then put it into a traditional mold to shape into round pieces. It sounds easy to do, but to grind buckwheat flour is very difficult, it must be the seeds that have been exposed to the sun for a week to be easy to grind. People grind the buckwheat seeds by hand, so they have to grind very carefully to get a fine powder, which helps the cake to not be gritty when eaten.
Buckwheat buckwheat cake has a slightly fleshy, slightly pungent taste typical of forest trees. The purple color floating on the cake background is reminiscent of a sweet flower season. Only those who have been to Ha Giang and met local people have the opportunity to use this famous cake
Celestial flower
Hoa Thien Ly has long become a dish that is “varied” into many dishes used in family meals and restaurants. In the midst of the hot summer sun, enjoying delicious dishes from Thien Ly flowers will be an interesting feeling like no other.
Celestial flower soup
Pick out large inflorescences. After washing, soaking in water and then trimming into small bunches to eat and then processing into many dishes such as natural flower soup with bones, minced meat or cooked crab. In addition, flowers stir-fried with beef or used with hot pot dishes are also very special. Not only a nutritious food, this flower also has a cooling effect, helping to sleep easily.
Banana flower is a wild plant, close to the Vietnamese people. Plain banana flower is purple, born to attach to dishes. The dishes made from banana flowers are simple but equally delicious.
The most popular dish is probably banana flower salad in the North, while the South calls it banana salad. The mannequin is a combination of all the sour, spicy, sweet, salty flavors, with the slightly acrid taste of banana flowers, mixed with the crispy fatty taste of pig ears, the fleshy taste of peanuts, the freshness of herbs.
In addition, banana flowers are also used in family dishes such as banana flower soup, vermicelli, banana flowers stewed with pork feet … or as a side dish.
Yellow Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum)
Yellow chrysanthemums are often displayed during Tet and full moon occasions. This type of flower is quite popular and has a very cheap price, so it is very good to use for cooking. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that chrysanthemum flowers have a bitter taste, pacifying, clearing heat, detoxifying, curing inflammation, swelling, pain, red eyes, headache, dizziness.
Yellow chrysanthemum tea
Chrysanthemum flowers are often distilled with rock sugar to eat as tea or cook soup, the soup is also very strange. This unique dish will help you prevent colds, mild encephalitis, rhinitis, pharyngitis, high blood pressure, hepatitis …
Peacock flower (needle flower)
Despite the simple beauty, the flower contains a lot of protein, fat, starch, vitamin A, vitamin C … very beneficial for health. Peonies are grown both for ornamental purposes and as ingredients in cooking.
In our country, peonies are grown a lot in areas with cool and humid climates such as Sapa, Tam Dao, Da Lat… Flowers used to eat will have a sweet taste, clear heat, dissipate phlegm, stop bleeding, and brighten. Hoa is usually cooked with chicken, served with hot pot vegetables or cooked with eel. Add a little flower powder to the pot of fish or crab soup to increase the delicious and nutritious flavor of the dish.
Peanut flowers
In addition to the flowers and leaves, the roots of the dandelion are also widely used for medicinal purposes. Poinsettia root has a sweet taste, cool properties, is used to relieve pain, treat colds, fever, hepatitis, jaundice, otitis media, toothache…
Lotus flower
While other flowers can be processed into rustic dishes, lotus flowers are only suitable for delicate and regal dishes. Most parts of the lotus plant such as lotus seeds, pistil, lotus heart, lotus root or lotus root can be eaten.
Dishes from lotus flowers
Lotus has a sweet taste and is very good for health. There is a delicacy made from lotus flowers that belongs to the royal delicacy. It’s steamed lotus duck. Besides, many dishes with a combination of lotus flavor such as lotus rice, lotus salad or lotus tea… all have the typical flavor of Vietnamese cuisine.
Nenuphar
Water lilies are abundant in the Mekong Delta. Where there are ponds, lakes, canals, there are water lilies. Water lilies are very beautiful, usually there are two species. Lotus lily planted as an ornamental, large flowers, purple red color, very beautiful.
Wild water lily, white or purple cotton. The pistil is yellow, both the flower and the pistil can be eaten, but people only eat the stem (stem) so it is always called water lily. Water lily peeled, cut into two knuckles to make raw vegetables with fish sauce. Mix salad with tub, bacon and peeled shrimp. Cook copper fish sour soup; pickled vinegar to make pickles… any dish is perfect.
Water lily soup
In the spring, people in the North often abstain from eating fish sauce, but people in the South do not. So water lilies are very useful in good luck dishes. The familiar water lily makes up the song: “In the West, flood water overflows the fields / Water lily soup is finished cooking and waiting for him”.
Chopsticks cotton
In the South, it is easy to see dishes made from cotton buds. The sorrel plant has white or purple flowers. Usually only blooms from October to December, can be used as an ornamental plant. But it has a very high nutritional value.
Cotton so chopsticks have a slightly bitter taste but have a strange taste in the mouth. In the season of chopsticks, people often pick fresh flowers in the early morning. Remove the stem and bitter taste, remove the radio. Lightly washed and then processed into sour soup perch, star fruit sour soup, snakehead fish, spirit fish, raw shrimp or sour hot pot with some other species are very delicious.
More simply, people often boil cotton compared to chopsticks with braised fish sauce. Or boiled with accompanying vegetables to cool off in the hot summer. This is one of the favorite dishes of many people.
In the Mekong Delta, the flood season is also the season when the daffodils bloom. Dandelion flowers bloom green, shading both sides of rivers and canals… creating a charming and poetic river scene. Crazy flower is a dish with bold flavor of the countryside. It is considered a specialty of the western river region. There are very few flowers that can be seen and eaten at the same time as the dandelion. People often process crazy cotton into delicious dishes. Such as crazy cotton salad, fried rice with shrimp, crazy cotton cooked with sour soup… But the most delicious must be mentioned the dish of crazy cotton cooked with Linh fish sour soup.
Only in the West can enjoy this unique delicacy. Still a recipe for sour soup from a long time ago. But the people here have cleverly added crazy flowers to create an extremely attractive and strange taste. The sour taste of tamarind, the sweetness of fish. And the scent of wild flowers can cool down the body in the midsummer heat.
Westerners also have a dish of fish sauce served with wild flowers. If you want to taste good, you have to eat it with crazy cotton and freshly caught spirit fish. Only then will you feel all the simple flavors. But no less attractive of this delicious dish.
If the popular dictionary is so much, the melancholy flowers are so rare. There are not many durian trees in That Son, Chau Doc, An Giang. The tree is woody, tall, with oval leaves in the North.
The flowers are white, bloom in spring, grow in small bunches. Some dishes are made from ha ha pain such as: Used to make salad (called mannequin in the North). Cotton and young leaves, washed, lightly exposed to hot water. Mix with dried choke fish, or grilled snakehead fish, shredded. Add some herbs, onion, and shredded mango, season to taste. The coriander salad is not bitter but sweet and very mouth-watering.
Cotton chives
Associated with flowers in the Mekong Delta, it is impossible not to mention chives. Chives eaten raw. If you stir-fry chives with chicken gizzards, or heart, liver, or pig’s blood, remember to do a lot, lest you eat one and ask for two. Shallot soup cooked with tofu has a cooling effect, women eat beautiful skin. The southern chives are not as pungent as the northern chives, so the expression “as clear as a pot of shallot soup” is not true in this land.
Yellow pumpkin
Cooking hot pot with fish sauce or hot pot with mushrooms is indispensable for this western rustic pumpkin dish. Pumpkin cotton is also used to cook soup, stir-fry garlic, especially pumpkin stuffed with meat is also very strange. Pumpkin is delicious but equally nutritious. Pumpkin flowers contain a lot of nutrients. For example calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus and many vitamins.
The flowers are cut off the stalks, usually male squash flowers. When picking pumpkin flowers, people often remove the pistil inside because of the bitterness. Then use boiled, steamed or cooked soup with dried shrimp, clam soup, mussel soup, crab soup or stir-fried with beef, pork. The easiest is to boil. Pumpkin cotton just needs to be put in a pot of boiled water, taken out to cool, squeezed out the water, dipped with braised meat or fish.
Dishes from pumpkin
The dishes from pumpkin flowers have anti-aging and anti-cancer effects because they contain a lot of beta carotene. This is a cellular antioxidant. Helps eliminate free radicals that can lead to cancer. This substance into the body will convert into vitamin A. Helps strengthen the activity of the immune system. In addition, pumpkin flowers also support the prevention of cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, good for pregnant women. Helps prevent osteoporosis, enhance vision…
Loofah
Referring to pumpkin flowers, can not forget melon. Melon when blooming is bright yellow. Skilled anglers often use it with bait to fish for mature frogs. Being teased, the frog jumped out to grab the bait and was put in the pan.
Melon buds dipped in chili sauce along with fried loofah buds with chicken hearts are delicious, with a characteristic greasy and rich taste. The loofah flower is very easy to cook, can be cooked with anything. Some dishes are made from melon flowers, such as sauteed copper shrimp on low fire, overpowering the fishy smell; fried with the skin and stomach of the frog is not viscous, eating crispy…
In the past, loofah was the food of the poor, easy to find, and filled the fence. Neighbors want to eat, no need to beg, arbitrarily picked. Now the loofah is the specialty.
Hyacinth flowers
If you have the opportunity to go to the western provinces. You will enjoy the delicious and rich fried water hyacinth with garlic. The cotton part of the water hyacinth has a sweet, crunchy taste that is easy to catch rice and relieve boredom. Definitely don’t miss the opportunity to enjoy the specialties here!
According to Oriental medicine, water hyacinth has a slightly sweet taste and is cool. Has diuretic effect, detoxifying, except leprosy, clearing heat. If you have asthma problems, wind cough. Just add water hyacinth with sugar to see the immediate effect.
Above are the flowers that can be processed into delicious rustic dishes. If you haven’t tried it yet, try cooking it for the whole family to enjoy!. The dishes made from flowers will not disappoint you. For more information, visit the website of Dung Ha Agricultural Products or thucphamkho.vn
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