Sticky rice with flower-shaped leaves

Ms. Giang Thi Sau, a Mong ethnic woman from Huoi Hoi village, Na Hy commune, recounted: "I don't know how long this bo phon plant has existed. When I was little, I followed my mother to the fields during the harvest season in March. The bo phon flowers bloomed white on the cliffs and hillsides, spreading their fragrance everywhere. My mother would pick them to make yellow sticky rice for my sisters and me to eat. Now, with the development of society, I and the villagers pick bo phon flowers to sell at the market and introduce them to everyone."

Besides being used as a dye for sticky rice to turn it yellow, the flowers of the bo phoenix tree, when boiled to make a drink, are believed to have liver-cooling and blood-boosting effects. Each year, the bo phoenix tree blooms only once in the spring, from late February to March. The newly bloomed flowers are small, white, and clustered together, emitting a distinctive fragrance. When the flowers bloom, filling the mountain slopes with their fragrant scent, locals go into the forest to pick them, tie them into small bunches, and hang them in the kitchen attic to dry and preserve them for later use. In recent years, due to the demand for this unique sticky rice dish, the villagers have started selling bo phoenix flowers at the market, each bunch costing 10,000 dong, allowing locals and tourists to purchase them and prepare them according to their preferences.

Ms. Ho Thi Sua from Huoi Cha village, Cha Cang commune, a lover of "xoi bo phon" (a type of sticky rice with flowers), said: "To prepare 'xoi bo phon,' you first need to choose fragrant upland sticky rice and 'xoi phon' flowers, combining them in a ratio of 200 grams of 'xoi phon' flowers to 2 kg of sticky rice. After washing the 'xoi phon' flowers with water, boil them in enough water for about 10 minutes to extract the color, then filter out impurities. After cooling to about 30 degrees Celsius, soak the rice in the flower water for 8-10 hours so that each grain of rice is infused with the flower water. Then, put the rice in a steamer and cook for about 30-45 minutes until the sticky rice is cooked. At this point, the sticky rice is yellow, chewy, and has the distinctive aroma of 'xoi phon' flowers." "Xoi bo phon," a characteristic dish of the Northwest mountainous region, is always present on the feast tables of ethnic groups in Nam Po district." If you have the chance to visit Nam Po in the spring or summer, be sure to try sticky rice with flower blossoms to experience the rich and unique culinary flavors of the ethnic groups in this area.

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