Banana Flower Paruppusili

Vaazha poo (Banana flower) parupusili is a rare delicacy for me these days. Rare, not because it is hard to find, but because it is so laborious that I rarely undertake the venture.

Cleaning and extracting the edible parts of the florets from the various layers of bracts is the first task. And then, removing the hard stamen and plastic-like petal that is not edible is the next step. Oil the palms before embarking on the procedure. Have a bowl of diluted buttermilk handy to place the edible parts during the procedure.

Many YouTube videos and online instructions clearly show how to do this if this is the first time. Since I've done it a zillion times as a youngster sous-chef in my mom's kitchen, I know that only the thought of the mouth-watering paruppusili  would make me go through the task of getting the edible flowers ready for cooking.

However, this time, since my mom is visiting, she undertook the task all by herself and made this delicious vaazha poo paruppusili!

The recipe for the paruppusili is the usual one with tuvar/toor dal as before. Simply chop the banana flowers and cook them with some salt and turmeric. Then, make it into paruppusili much like tindora paruppusili.

Of course, my mom takes a short-cut sometimes and instead of steaming the lentil balls and then pan frying the crumbs to crispness, she deep fried the balls into vada and then crumbled them instead.