Banana blossoms in coco-milk Filipino style

I haven't seen banana blossoms in Farmville. Perhaps the developers don't know it makes a good dish. Well, as I mentioned we look back into the traditional Filipino or Southeast Asian food and banana blossom specialties are among those.

Let's go cooking. All you need are the following:

Ingredients:
2 banana blossoms
1 cup thick coconut milk
2 T vinegar
1/4 cup sliced tomatoes
1/4 cup sliced onion
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 T cooking oil
salt
peeper

Directions:
Remove the tough covering of the blossoms. Cut into thin slices crosswise. Add 2 tablespoons coarse salt and squeeze off bitter juice. Rinse in water and squeeze dry. Set aside.

Heat oil in skillet and saute the garlic until light brown. Add onion and then the tomatoes. Cook about 3 minutes. Add banana blossoms and vinegar and bring to a boil without stirring. Simmer for another 3 minutes. Add salt and peeper to taste and stir. Continue cooking until banana blossoms is tender. Add thick coconut milk and turn off heat.

Serve hot.

Coconut Milk Specialty

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Howdy! Friends, guests, ladies and gentlemen, its another fresh year. Home of good ideas extends its greetings to our avid visitors.

It seems we ran out of post during the Christmas season because of many celebrations, parties, and out of town trips. But we are back again this time. As an opener for January 2010, we offer you new recipes in our Monday cooking. For Filipinos out there you will like this features as we refresh our appetites with traditional foods served with a popular Filipino ingredient, the coconut cream -"gata." And for sure you must have heard the health benefits of taking MCFA 0r medium chain fatty acids, especially lauric acid abundantly found in coconut oil. We will be having a feature about it in our Health and Family section later this month.

In preparation for the coming coconut milk based dishes, we share with you a simple way to prepare your coconut milk or "gata."

You need a mature coconut, husk removed and cut into half with the water set aside for other use. A mature coconut has a hard meat and a hard and dark brown shell. Coconut is available in local markets.

Coconut milk has 2 categories, the thick and the thin. Thick milk is obtained by directly pressing the grated coconut milk, however if extracting out of 1 coconut only, 1/2 cup of clean water (previously boiled and allowed to cool) can be added to easily remove the milk. Then the milk is strained in clean cheesecloth to remove the solids. Set aside and use in the cooking.

The thin coconut milk can be derived from the grates previously extracted with the thick milk. Add 1 cup water to the grates and extract. Repeat 2 to 3 times more and combine the extract then strain. Set aside the thin milk for use in the cooking.

The milk out of this process is fresh and can be used directly or chilled and use within the next day. Prolonged storage may affect quality of food.

image from wikipedia.org

Banana Peanut Blend

Banana Powder Preparations:

1. Wash mature bananas (saba variety), unpeeled.
2. Steam in medium fire for 25 minutes
3. Peel the cooked bananas.
4. Slice into thin chips.
5. Spread on tray lined with nylon screen and cover with another nylon screen.
6. Sun dry until brittle.
7. Grind the chips using a blended

Peanut powder preparations

1. Prepare nuts free from spoils and foreign materials
2. Toast peanut in oven at 150 deg. Celsius for 45 minutes.
3. Cool then remove seed coat.
4. Grind into grits using electric blender.

To obtain the blend, mix equal amounts of banana powder and peanut powder and use in your food preparations.

Source: FNRI

Banana and Nut Pancake

Banana-Nut Pancake


Ingredients:
1/2 cup All Purpose Flour
1/4 tsp Salt, iodized, fine
1/4 cup Sugar, white, refined
2 tsp Baking powder
3/4 cup Banana-peanut blend
3/4 cup Milk, evaporated
1 pc egg
1 tsp Vanilla
1 Tbsp Cooking oil, for greasing

Procedure

1. Mix well flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, and banana-peanut blend. Set aside.
2. Beat egg then add milk and vanilla. Blend well.
3. Pour the dry ingredients in the milk mixture and blend well to make a smooth batter. Pass through a strainer.
4. Drop 1/4 cup of the mixture in a heated and slightly greased shallow pan or griddle.
5. Fry until slightly brown on both sides.

Yields 6 pieces at 10 grams per piece. Serving size is 1 piece

Estimated content per serving: 230kcal Energy, 6.5g Protein

PS: If banana-peanut blend is not available in your area, we will be sharing next issue the process of preparing it

Source: FNRI-DOST