Butterfly pea flower

Fleur de pois papillon (pois bleu)

What it is

The blue comes from ternatins, polyacylated anthocyanins unusually stable for their class, which is why the flower colours rice and jellies where most plant blues collapse. The colour is a pH meter: acid below about 3 turns the infusion pink-red, neutral holds it blue, alkali sends it green.

In the kitchen

Ten flowers per 250 ml of hot water for five minutes and no longer — you are extracting a colour, and time only adds a faint hay taste. Add the lemon at the table, in front of whoever is eating: the violet-to-pink shift is the whole reason the flower is on the plate.

Goes with

Lemon Lime Glutinous rice Coconut milk Pandan leaf Lemongrass

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