JoeReal

I handed the bloom to my wife and she cooked it for us. I don't know the recipe but I know the preparation step for use in various recipes.

The preparation step is needed to take out the undesirable acids (oxalic) in the petals.

First, warm up water and place 4 oz salt per quart. Add 2 oz vinegar to prevent browning of the skin, or if you are a wine maker like me, I would add a tsp of citric acid. While letting it warm (up to 175 deg F) until the salt dissolves, prepare the banana blossom. You have to peel off several layers of petals until the color is pink or light pink. Then cut away the stalk into 1/4 of the way of the remaining bloom and throw away. Chop off the remaining bloom into thin slices, less than 1/8" per cut, this would be like chopping off onions. Then throw them into your warm salt solution and let soak for at least a couple of hours.

Drain off the chopped blossoms, and lightly hand squeeze them. Rinse the squeezed blossoms with cool water and then squeeze them again, do this process a total of three times. On the last squeeze, do as hard as you could make it.

The resulting product is rich in fiber and can be used in a lot of other recipes and has unique flavor. I'll ask my wife what other various recipes to follow, but let me see if I can remember a few.

One of the quick things I know is egg omelet of the chopped blossoms prepared above. But I will have to microwave the chopped blossom first before mixing it in to the egg omelet. I would get half a cup of the chopped blossom, microwave it for three minutes on high. Then cover and set aside while I prepare the pan for making omelet. Then simply use the banana blossom like you would make any other omelet.

One of the favorite that we do is cook the chopped blossoms in coconut milk, but I don't know the recipe on hand.

Another is to use them when cooking steamed fish.

Still another is to mix it with ground meat and make hamburgers or meat balls. It would be healthier treat.