Vaazhaipoo Usili

Hello readers, it's almost 2 months now since my last post. We went for vacation to India and hence could not blog. Right now, it's very cold here in Frankfurt, though there is no snow. Either because of the vacation mood still lingering in my mind or because of this moody winter, I don't know... but I feel lazier to do things. With great effort, I'm writing my first post of 2011. By the way, wish you all a very happy new year :-) !!!

This time, I tried a vegetarian recipe. One of my favourite veg side dish that my mom used to cook is Vaazhai poo thuvaram. The flower of banana, like the other products of the plantain tree, has a very high nutritional value. It has a high fibre content, rich in Vitamin A and C and is also considered very good for women with menstrual disorders.

The challenge lies in the separation of the edible parts of the flower and cleaning them. Each petal of the banana flower must be open and the individual flowers inside should be collected. In each individual flower, the thickest solid stamen must be removed along with the white layer covering around and they must be discarded. The rest of the flowers can be chopped and put inside diluted butter milk for some time.

Since I was busy doing this, I forgot to take pictures... For those who are new to cooking with banana flower, please refer to the pictures in vaazhaipoo-banana-flower-poriyal to get an idea, which parts to discard.

After you are finished with this heroic, patience demanding job, yo!!! Ready to make a tasty dish out of them...

Though my mom usually makes thuvaram with this, which tastes heavenly, I just wanted to try a different recipe and tried Solai Achi's recipe. You can find the recipe here and I followed it exactly.

 
It came out excellent. A very tasty healthy dish...