(serves 4)
The first place i tried banana flower was at Green Peppercorn, a delicious Thai-Lao restaurant in Fairfield. I absolutely loved the crunchy fibrous texture of banana flower and they do a great dressing with scrumptious crispy chicken! I was fascinated to find out more about this ingredient, and finally when we were in Vietnam we found it was often on the menu! Banana flower is literally the flowers of a banana tree - we saw this in the field on our countryside tour in Sapa! It is chopped off then outer layers are taken off and you can see 'little bananas' as you shed each layer!
On our cooking class we found out that the dressing is essentially the same as the green papaya salad, and we had others in the class that made it with green papaya so we got to find out about both. We were told this also works with green mango and/or cucumber... so refreshing and delicious! I haven't found any banana flower in Sydney yet, but have tried it out again with green papaya and was super yum :)
Cooking time: 5min
Ingredients
400g banana flower (or green papaya, grated)
1/2 carrot, grated
250g prawns, shells removed and butterflied
2 T rice wine vinegar
1 T vegetable oil
1 tsp vegetable stock powder
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp paprika powder
50g shallots, finely chopped
100g fresh mint
1 T sesame seeds, toasted
To garnish:
2 T roasted peanuts, crushed
1 T dried onion flakes
handful of coriander
Dressing
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 fresh chilli, crushed
1 T sugar
1/2 T lemon/lime juice
1 T fish sauce
Method
1. Prepare a large bowl of water and vinegar. Cut banana flower and remove purple outer layer and small bananas and place in water to separate and to keep from browning.
NB. If making papaya salad, then mix the papaya, carrot and vinegar, then squeeze out the water with a cloth. The vinegar helps to soften the papaya and make it less bitter.
2. Heat a saucepan on medium heat and add vegetable oil. Add paprika powder, vegetable stock powder, sesame oil and spring onions. Stir for 30sec, then add in prawns and cook until prawns are just cooked (turn orange-pink) then take off the heat and put aside.
3. Prepare the dressing by combining the garlic, chilli, sugar, lemon/lime juice and fish sauce and mix well.
4. Drain the banana blossom from the water and pat dry. Combine with the prawns, carrot, and dressing. Toss in the mint and sesame seeds.
5. Garnish with roasted peanuts and dried onion flakes and serve immediately!
how funky is the new format! cool cool ! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks!! inspired by you actually :)
Delete