Jul 19 - Banana Stem 'Kootu'

Banana plants (technically they're grasses, which makes your breakfast staple a cereal of sorts) are the classic case of being edible from stem to seed. First, obviously the fruit, and the green version is also used as a vegetable and as a dietary starch staple. The blossoms are cleaned and cooked up into curries and the core can be treated the same way as an artichoke, the leaves are used as thatch and as disposable plates, the central veins of the leaf and the outer layers of the stem are a useful source for ropes and twine. That leaves the core stem and the underground Corm. The corm regenerates into a new plant so I guess humans will want to leave it alone, but the core has a mild vegetal grassy flavor that pairs beautifully with coconut, the texture and crunch is similar to Jicama, but with a certain directionality' (kinda like a steak).. The diced core is boiled in water along with turmeric and salt. and a blend of fresh coconut, cumin and arbol chiles is added to it. Let the mix cook down until all traces of rawness disappear. then finish with a garnish of curry leaves and a drizzle of coconut oil.

If you want to know more about prepping the stem, here's a link.

Comments

Product Review: Ninja Mega Kitchen system and a recipe for Masala Dosa

One of the biggest reasons for attending conferences is the priceless experience of meeting fellow bloggers and get an invaluable exposure to all things culinary. This includes vendors with new products to savor and get inspiration from. I had no complaints about whatever appliances I had for making traditional Dosa (Traditional South Indian rice & lentil crepes) batter, a sturdy tabletop stone grinder that you could add the Urad dal, turn the timer on , and 30 minutes later, come back to a container full of fluffy, batter with the consistency of whipped egg whites. The The cons of this is the cleaning up, of the various parts, the roller, the grinding bin, the multiple trays on which the rollers need to be placed while transferring the rice & lentil batter, the invariable drips of thick batter on the counter.... you get the point, It takes quite a bit of time. I was pleasantly surprised when the appliance company, Ninja asked me if I'd like to try an...

Unusual Ingredients - Unripe Blueberry Achar

T'was just another Summer afternoon, The kids were home for the summer holidays, getting bored, there's only so much summer reading you can force them to do, and the Indian mommy in me could no longer caution them against going out in the afternoon (I've solemnly refused to use that horrid excuse of 'You'll get a dark tan if you stay out in the mid day sun'), and so we decided to head out to Terhune orchards for the blueberry picking. The kids never say no to outings to the orchard, they LOVE the trip there, the cute yellow dogs and the cats, the chocolate crinkle and Snickerdoodle cookies, and they positively trip over grabbing buckets and heading joyfully towards the berry bushes... ... And there it ends, the younger one loses herself in her delightful imaginary worlds where she probably thinks she's hacking her way through virgin Amazon jungle, sighing at every branch that brushes against her legs, picks 2 or 3 berries as if they were a new as ...

Pickling & preserving the Buddha's Hand!

Got your attention with that sacrilegious sounding title on this post, didn't I? Well, I'm as spiritual as the next person out there, and never in my life will I ever commit that variety of Blasphemy, so nothing to fret about. I still wonder why these curious looking citrus entities (other than the obvious visual reason) were called such. It turns out that these fruits are used as a religious offering to the Buddha. My neighboring Whole Foods Market (which is quite some distance away, in Princeton) had a stock of these weird looking citrus and I must have been the oddball customer who immediately went cuckoo on spotting them. Since I had never seen one before, I immediately went for the biggest fruit with the most tentacles (since they were sold as individual units rather than by weight) The first three 'tentacles' were peeled off for their zest, dried in the oven and went into making a citrus salt for my Food52 Secret Santa . Making ...

Panfusine

Search This Blog