It is always a pleasure when your plants fruit- we recently had one such delightful moment when we harvested a big bunch of banana. Once the fruit ( banana is botanically a berry, but still...) is harvested, the banana plant (which is technically a herb, but still...) is chopped off. One edible, tasty and nutritious part of the plant is its inner core. We always make it a point to cook it and this time we made cutlets; that made a perfect breakfast for us.
So below is the recipe for Banana stem cutlets:
1. Cut the inner core of the banana steam into small pieces and keep aside. Similarly chop, onion, garlic, ginger and green chillies. ( I'm not mentioning quantities since you can vary it as per your taste)
2. Pressure cook and mash potatoes and keep aside.
3. In a vessel take oil and splutter mustard seeds. Then add curry leaves and the chopped onions. As the onions start to discolour, add the ginger, garlic, green chillies and fry. (We also added turmeric, coriander, cumin and Garam masala for a heavy body flavour. We have even skipped these spices out, and the cutlets turn out to be equally good)
4. Once these spices start to give out aroma, add the chopped banana stem and little water and cook for about 15 minutes.
5.Cook till the water is fully evaporated, then cool it. Once cooled, put it in a blender and grind it to a fine paste.
6. Take it out of the blender and add the mixture to the potato (equal quantity of potato and mixture). The mixture will turn out quiet watery, since the stems release water when grinding. To make it more pliable add gram flour. Add salt and mix well. In case your mixture is quite dry, we still recommend adding gram flour, since it gives a nice umami flavour to the dish.
7. Take very little oil in an iron girder, put a blob of cutlet mixture and gently spread it into cutlet shape. You can even shape it in your hands and place it on the girder- however use wet hands and that makes shaping easy.
8. Fry till the crust turn dark brown and the cutlets are firm. Serve hot- makes a tasty, wholesome breakfast.
So below is the recipe for Banana stem cutlets:
1. Cut the inner core of the banana steam into small pieces and keep aside. Similarly chop, onion, garlic, ginger and green chillies. ( I'm not mentioning quantities since you can vary it as per your taste)
2. Pressure cook and mash potatoes and keep aside.
3. In a vessel take oil and splutter mustard seeds. Then add curry leaves and the chopped onions. As the onions start to discolour, add the ginger, garlic, green chillies and fry. (We also added turmeric, coriander, cumin and Garam masala for a heavy body flavour. We have even skipped these spices out, and the cutlets turn out to be equally good)
6. Take it out of the blender and add the mixture to the potato (equal quantity of potato and mixture). The mixture will turn out quiet watery, since the stems release water when grinding. To make it more pliable add gram flour. Add salt and mix well. In case your mixture is quite dry, we still recommend adding gram flour, since it gives a nice umami flavour to the dish.
7. Take very little oil in an iron girder, put a blob of cutlet mixture and gently spread it into cutlet shape. You can even shape it in your hands and place it on the girder- however use wet hands and that makes shaping easy.
8. Fry till the crust turn dark brown and the cutlets are firm. Serve hot- makes a tasty, wholesome breakfast.
Fantastic. Thanks so much for sharing, Delson. Looking foreward to giving it a try.
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