As for its cooking benefits, my mother often picks some fresh flowers in her small garden, taking out their green stems and places the blue petals together into water and rice when cooking rice, either using a digitally modern rice cooker or a traditionally classic pot with lid. End result: we get lovely blue rice to please the eyes of the eaters! ;) The fresh flowers can also be dipped in batter and deep-fried, tempura style, and serve with sweet chili sauce, or alternatively, ketchup for the kids.
According to Thai local wisdom, butterfly pea flowers are squeezed for aqueous extract to be incorporated with coconut milk and other base ingredients to colour Thai desserts in blue and purple colours...now that you get the idea...huh?
And finally the drink, oh yes!: It is called "Nam Dhok Anchan (น้ำดอกอัญชัน)", a syrupy indigo-blue drink, made of butterfly pea flowers, honey and sugar syrup. The drink can also be consumed with some drops of lime juice to create sweet 'n' sour flavour and to turn its indigo-blue colour into purple or pink-purple depending on its intensity of acidity. Next time, I'll have to fulfill my curiosity by mixing a few drops of alkaline water such as young coconut juice, cucumber juice or watermelon juice into the drink...and see how it will turn out! :)