Vazhai Poo(banana blossom) Paruppu Usili

This is an authentic dish at Brahmin houses.When i got married to Hari and went to one of my hubby's relative house they served this dish.That was the first time i tasted usili and just loved it.Later I collected the recipe from lakshmi maami and also got few hints from my Sister in law.This is my favourite dish and everyone in my family loves eating this including my 2 year old kid.The cleaning of the flower is time consuming.So I clean the flower the last night,pack it in an air tight container and refrigerate it.It will last for 2 days too.This dish tastes like puttu.Eating banana flower will overcome the constipation problems.Usual Usli consumes more of oil.But considering the health factor I had reduced the amount of oil and also steam cooked the dal and hadn't deep fried.The original recipe calls for deep frying the grinded dhal.But steam cooking the dhal doesn't alter the taste!!!The detailed procedure of cleaning the flower and the cooking method is being given.

CLEANING OF THE FLOWER:

Cleaning of the flower is very easy.The bunch of florets inside the flower need to taken separately.Later the stamen (the long pointed one) and the transparent small part need to taken out before cooking.The banana flower/Blossom gets oxidised soon and hence need to be cooked fast.Also while cleaning apply oil in your hand to avoid your hands getting blackened by the stains of the banana flower juice.we could be able to extract florets only to certain rounds.After taking away few florets a stage may come where we could not find the stamen.At that point the small whole flower itself could be cut as a whole(few people even eat this part raw.I haven't and I don't know how it tastes).To remove the sour/bitter taste of the flower the chopped flower is put in the water mixed with little amount of curd.The medicinal value of the flower is unlimited.