Flowers bloom in Thai cuisine

A restaurant worker prepares the Thai speciality dish of steamed lotus leaf pocket, known as Khao Hor Bai Bua, fragrant parcels of rice, lotus seeds, boiled rice, marinated pork, salted egg that are wrapped infused with the flavours of large green lotus leaves, at a shop known for specialising in them, in Bangkok, Thailand. - Photos EPA

Floral ingredients used extensively, not just as garnish.

DELICIOUS and beautiful, Thai food is appreciated the world over for its striking tastes and surprising combinations of sweet and salty, spicy and sour. But lesser known is that flowers also bloom in Thai cuisine, they appear as essential ingredients in popular dishes, as snacks sold at street stalls in the form of battered flower fries, to speciality dishes at local restaurants, to full banquets in five-star hotels promoting extensive floral banquets.

The use of flowers in cuisine dates back in time, and across cultures throughout the world.

Fried Thai orchid flowers among other flowers are on sale near Ko Kret island, in Nonthaburi province on the outskirts of Bangkok.

Thailand sells itself as the Kitchen of the World – and with a vast variety of foods both traditional and new, its claim is encouraging Thailand’s creative chefs to further combine the visual beauty of flowers with fragrant new and old tasting dishes, highlighting floral ingredients in the foods, not only the garnish.

A plate of Yum Samoen Prai Bussaba or Herbs and Flowers salad on a Bangkok five-star hotel's floral banquet menu.

Flowers eaten in Thailand include the lotus and orchid flowers, butterfly pea, ixora, cowslip creeper blossoms, yellow sesbania. banana flowers, okra flowers, orange bombax. roselle flowers, and wild torch ginger flower, to name a few. They are sold in street markets, collected from the sides of fields and roads and in private gardens.

Thai lotus farmer Usa Mahmueangbon picks lotus flowers in her family's lotus and water lily farm in Saladin village, in Nakhon Pathom, about 50km west of Bangkok. Every second day, to allow for re-growth of the flowers, Usa and her sister wade into the 2.4ha cultivated waters to hand-pick about 1,500 lotus flowers that are then sold to a wholesaler who takes them to market for further onward sale as decoration temple offerings and food.

A table of flower food, part of the Plaza Athenee-Le Meridien hotel's floral banquet menu.

On Koh Kret, a small island north of the Thai capital Bangkok, one of the most famous snacks is battered and fried flowers – served with sweet chilli sauce. Many curries and stir fries contain flowers and leaves – some of them are the dry centres of the Bombax flower that are a vital ingredient in spicy northern noodle soups and curries. – EPA