Malaysian specialty turns blue, thanks to flower petals.
A favorite dish in Malaysia’s eastern region of Kelantan is Nasi Kerabu, flavored and generally jazzed up with smashed petals of bunga telang flowers. The only thing I can ever recall eating that came close to this color was a sugary ice-pop that you pinched and slid up a plastic tube.
According to a Malaysian food site:
Pulut Tai Tai (it’s the blue one).
“Traditionally, the rice is tinted bright blue from petals of flowers called bunga telang [clitoria in English]. Hundreds of these petals have to be sun-dried, boiled in water, to cook one pot of rice. There are several varieties of herbs, unfamiliar in English – daun kentut ,daun kudu ,cekur , seven types of daun larak and kucing seduduk – lending different colors to the rice. The most used variety for Nasi Kerabu is the blue color variety of petals. This naturally tinted ‘blue rice’ is served with Ulam – a salad of fresh, raw vegetables – bean sprouts, long green beans, shallots, cucumber; combined with fried salted fish, fish crackers, fried grated coconut and other savory garnishing.”
Most of the receipes I found for Nasi Kerabu skipped the laborious petal drying, short-cutting with blue dye (sounds like that old frozen ice-pop). But here’s a tea cake recipe that uses bunga telang, a dessert called Pulut Tai Tai, which has NOT been tested in our Utility Research Kitchen.
Would somebody out there let us know what bunga telang actually tastes like?
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