How to clean the banana flower?

Banana flower is otherwise called banana blossom or plantain flower or banana heart .The tamil name is Vaazhai poo (vaalai poo).In addition to the fruit, the flower of the banana plant is used in Southeast Asian, Tamil, Bengali and Kerala (India) cuisine, either served raw with dips or cooked in soups and curries.
Cleaning the banana blossom is a challenging task for every beginner.
So I am explaining it with images.



Wash the entire flower under running water.Apply some oil on your hands to avoid discoloration of skin.
Remove and discard the red bracts.
Gather all the small flowers inside. If not used they would have grown into individual sweet bananas.
You can peel up blossom to certain limit only, then leave the cone as it is.
carefully open each white blossom. You may see a plastic textured petal and a hard stamen. Just remove both.






Discard the above and collect the soft flowers.




Take 2 cups of water and mix 1 tablespoon of yogurt to it.
Immerse the cleaned banana flowers in to the solution.,
This is done to prevent the oxidation of the flower.
Chop the cleaned plantain flowers and the inner cone.
This chopped banana flower can be used to make curry, fry, vazhai poo vadai, soup etc.


Image shows the typical Indian style Plantain flower poriyal

Vazhai poo poriyal (Plantain flower stir fry)

Vazhai poo poriyal

Valai poo/ Banana/ plantain flower is an excellent vegetable used in Indian cooking. It can be used to make vadai, fry, curry ,salad etc. Though it is a hard task to clean the plantain flower(Tamil-vazhai poo), but it is  worth doing it.
The banana flower should be used within 2 days you buy it.

Cleaning the flower:
First remove the red bracts. Take out the inner flowers. Remove the thick stamen in each flower. Remove the plastic-like portion in each flower.
You can chop the innermost bracts too.
wash them and chop them into fine pieces.
Immediately soak them in buttermilk solution.(1/2 cup buttermilk + 2 cups water)
If you want to know more about cleaning the flower, just read this page.
How to clean banana flower (vazhai poo)?
Also:
http://www.ganeshvilla.com/bananas/banana_flower_salad.htm

Ingredients:
Plantain flower- 1 (cleaned and chopped)
onion - 1
green chillies- 2
mustard seeds- 1/4 tsp
urid dhal- 1/4 tsp
curry leaves - 1 brig
shredded coconut - 2 tbsp.
salt - 1/4 tsp
cooking oil- 1 tsp

Method:
Heat a pan.Add oil , urid dhal and mustard seeds.
After the mustard seed pops, add chopped onion, green chillies , curry leaves.
After 30 seconds add the chopped plantain flowers.
Stir fry everything . Add salt and 1/4 cup water.
cover the pan with a lid.
After 10 minutes the plantain flower will get cooked.Switch off the flame.
Add shredded coconut and cumin seeds. Mix well and serve hot as a side dish with sambar rice.

Serving suggestions:
Serves for 3 people.
It can be served as a side dish for Sambar rice.