Sustainable Living Choices: Banana Flower Dish

“Cooking with banana flower is fun. I am always looking forward to it and as soon as the next flower in the garden is ready to be cut off, the banana flower dish is on our menu. You can also buy the flowers in an Asian shop. I think that I should mention the health benefits here as well. Low in calories but rich in fiber, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus and other goodness makes it the super healthy ingredient for a perfect dinner.”

And this is how we cook with the banana flower:

First of all, you need to prepare the banana flower. You will find here the red outer leafs, the little blossoms with the yellow ends on them and the heart. Take the outer red leafs off. We don’t need them for cooking but you can keep some nice ones for fancy serving later.

The little blossoms have like a soft scales on them. You need to remove and discard those. Clean the usable parts of the flower and put aside for later. Better you also don’t cut the heart trough yet as it tends to get dark on the inner site. Keep all of it in some water with some lemon juice till you use it.

Now is the time to prepare your meat and veggies. For vegetarians: You can also use this method to cook a beautiful vegetarian dish if you wish so.

We used chicken breast this time, but you can use any meat you like. We marinated the meat for a little while in some soy souse, turmeric, chili, ginger and lemon grass.

Put some olive oil into a hot wok or pan and cook the meat till nearly tender. Add onions and mushrooms and cook it together with the meat for a couple of minutes. Put aside for later.

Now is the time to cook the banana flower. Pour a little bit of olive oil into the hot wok, add the little blossoms, the banana heart cut to pieces and sprinkle the juice of one large lemon. The lemon juice is very important as it takes the bitterness out of the flower. Add some soy souse if you wish, stir gentle and cook for a couple of minutes . Put aside