Hello Everyone!!  For our dedicated followers out there, you may remember that about a week a ago, Gnome gave me two banana blossoms (flowers) to give to the guinea pigs.  I promptly refused because I was determined to make yum-yums out of them.

Well, I did some research on preparation of the banana blossom for cooking and this is what I did.

I took off the outer petals (bracts) of the banana flower, layer after layer, until I got to the inner piece which looked  like a little cabbage.

While taking off each petal, there was a  layer of florets in between the bracts, which are pictured below.

According to my research, you can eat these florets by painstakingly going through each one of these to remove the outer calyx and the pistil.   I did one for the picture and then thought to myself that it was extremely tedious and I wasn’t bored and hungry enough to do the rest.

I finally got to the heart of the flower.

I cut it into pieces, as instructed, and placed them in vinegar water to remove the tannic properties.

After, a couple of hours, the tannin was partially removed to leave edible parts that tasted like cabbage.  They didn’t taste that great and I didn’t think that it was worth all the trouble of preparation and soaking time to get something so bland and uninteresting.

I decided to give the rest to the piggies after-all.

In conclusion, I am glad that I tried to prepare the banana blossom so that I could make up my own mind as to whether it was worth it or not.  Outside the cultural context of eating banana flowers in India and South East Asia, I can only view this as a poor cabbage substitute.  For the amount of energy, time and effort required in preparation, I would rather give these flowers to the piggies to enjoy.

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