Delicious dishes from the ban flower of Thai people in Moc Chau

Not only bring the pure beauty of the mountains northwestBan flowers are also processed by Thai girls into many delicious dishes from ancient times. Up to now, restaurants and homestays in Moc Chau still maintain that cultural capital with a few variations to put on the restaurant menu, delighting foodies.

Ban flowers and buds will be skillfully plucked from the branches, choose healthy, not rotten, crushed flowers and bring back to blanch to dry. Many people meticulously remove the stem to reduce the bitterness, but there are also people who like to eat the whole stalk because they like the acrid, fleshy but crispy taste. The finished product will depend on the dishes that are processed. Here are a few dishes from flowers in Moc Chau that tourists can enjoy in this season.

Flower salad with wild vegetables

March and April is also the time when there are many kinds of field vegetables, forest vegetables, people often pick sturgeon, Chinese coriander, vegetables, gotu kola, bamboo shoots… and many other unnamed vegetables to wash. north on the shelf and furniture. Cooked vegetables, mixed with blanched flowers, seasoned with spices, mixed with a little crushed roasted peanuts is a salad of wild vegetables, both cool, sweet and fragrant.

Stir-fried flowers with bitter bamboo shoots and beef

The Thai people have a legend about the love story of a couple who fell in love but could not get married, went to find each other and died turning into a ban tree or a bitter bamboo shoot. Strangely, this bamboo shoot is bitter when eaten alone, but when eaten with flowers, it is less bitter and sweeter, more fleshy. Thinly sliced ​​bamboo shoots lengthwise, stir-fry until cooked, then pour in lightly sautéed beef, then add the flowers to the island, add a little garlic, and the smell of China. On a plate, the smell of bamboo shoots, the smell of meat, is so fragrant. This dish is very suitable to eat on cold rainy, foggy days in Moc Chau.

Ban flower bone soup

This soup is also created by Thai people for a long time. The flowers that are picked are washed, picked up, and dropped into a pot of simmered bone broth, with some thinly sliced ​​bamboo shoots, wild vegetables, and indispensable pounded glutinous rice. Thai people rarely eat plain soup and boiled food, mainly they make dishes, bake, bury ashes, keep the kitchen, so the soup must also be cooked so that it is not soggy like other places. Therefore, the pot of flower soup from the north is smoky, boiling at the bud, mixing between rice, flowers and bitter bamboo shoots, looking very attractive.

Ban flower salad

In Moc Chau today, locals and some restaurants also make strawberry ban flower salad. Hoa ban mixed with raw vegetables, strawberries and seasoning is just eaten to become a cool, sweet and beautiful salad. This is the right dish to have fun, appetizer and fight the heat for March-April, the time when the hot and sunny Lao winds come back.

Visitors to Moc Chau as well as other areas with many other flowers will be surprised at the creativity in Thai cuisine. In addition to the above dishes, the flowers of the mountains are also processed into stuffed with grilled fish, dipped in hot pot, sticky rice… and countless other ways of mixing with other foods to create delicious, nutritious, and beautiful dishes. Diners.

Note:

When traveling to Moc Chau in the flowering season, avoid cutting flowers, breaking branches, uprooting trees so that the daytime forests are thicker and more beautiful, adorning the Northwest mountains and forests. In the past, flowers can be obtained by anyone, many homestays and restaurants have dishes from flowers. But from 2021, ban flower collection is limited, only a few units can get it and plant it in the yard and garden of families in the remote village to have enough flowers to serve tourists. If you want to enjoy food from flowers, you can go to homestays in Vat village, Ang village or Dong Hai Moc Chau restaurant.

Thanh Dao – Khanh Tran