Banana Blossom Frenzy

My brother lives near Raleigh, North Carolina...and although Raleigh is usually not banana territory, he managed to keep a banana plant alive in his backyard until it bore fruit. On the right is a picture of his masterpiece!

Below you can see a varmint that ventured into his banana plant.

(Okay...so it's stuffed...but it loves bananas too!)

My brother was telling me about cooking the banana flower from his plant, so I became interested. I was unaware that people actually ate the banana flowers.

So I visited an Asian Grocery here in Austin and bought two banana flowers. Being curious like I am, I ended up spending about two hours in the grocery (it is quite large). I came away with about 5 bags of food, including lotus root and bitter melon.

After I brought my banana flowers home, I had to find out how to cook them, so I went to you tube and

found a great video showing me how at http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=iuQuP5hlBPo.

I found another video at http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=btFSywCa8x8&feature=related that showed how to prepare the flower for cooking.

The outer red bracts are tough and need to be removed. Below you can see the tender parts of the flower after the bracts are removed. Below that picture, you can see what it looks like when cut in half.

If you look carefully below, you can see the layering. These are layers of bracts and flowers. In the center is a tough core that many people remove. Banana flowers are quite interesting, and in my next post I will discuss them.





First, I must warn you that the banana flower turns brown quickly after being cut, so it helps to squeeze some lime juice onto it to retain the light color.

I modified the you tube recipe a lot because we do not like hot and spicy food, and I wanted to use chicken instead of fish. Everyone loved the dish that I made so here I will explain how it is made.

You will need

• 1-2 banana flowers
• dried tamarind
• water
• about 1/2 cup coconut flakes
• about 1 cup of coconut milk
• 1 onion
• 1 chili pepper (this can be adjusted to your taste...using only one makes it quite mild)
• 2 limes
• salt
• sugar
• chicken
• peanut oil

I began heating enough water to cover the banana flowers to a boil. I then cut each flower into four pieces and put two pieces of tamarind (each about an inch wide) and the flower pieces into the water. I boiled the flower pieces until they were tender then set them aside. I cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces and diced the onion. I stir-fried the chicken and onion in peanut oil until the chicken was thoroughly cooked. I then cooled the flower pieces and cut them into small pieces. You can see the approximate size in the picture below. (I discarded the tamarind.)

I put the flower pieces in a pan, then added the chicken, onion, diced chili pepper, coconut, coconut milk, small amount of sugar and salt. I then squeezed the lime over the mixture. The picture below shows how it looked.

I heated it thoroughly on medium high heat so the flavors could blend. Then I served it with rice and Naan. The picture below shows a serving.