Banana Flower / Vaazhaipoo in Tamil / Arati Pavvu in Telugu is one of the Superfoods which is easily available in markets. This banana flower blossom has many medicinal properties and is highly nutritious. In TamilNadu, they widely use this flower to make many dishes in the kitchen. Though cleaning the banana flower florets is little tedious, my mom never failed to make this curry or Usili using this flower. During childhood, we often saw either banana flower curry or banana stem kootu in our meal. Vaazhaipoo vadai / banana flower vada is one of the delicacies of Tamil Nadu. You can either fry this lentil based vadai in oil or cook them in air fryer too.
Ingredients
Fennel Seeds / Sombu - 1 tsp
Rice Flour - 1/4 tbsp
Garlic - 2 Pods
Ginger - 1 small cube
Green chillies - 4 Medium
Dry Red Chilli - 1
Chopped coriander leaves - 1 handful
Crushed curry leaves - 1 stick
Hing / Asafoetida - 1 Dash
Salt - To Taste
Oil - Enough to fry the vadas
Water - Enough to grind the batter coarsely.
Banana Flower florets of 1 flower thoroughly cleaned and chopped.
Preparation
Cleaning Banana flower
Cleaning the Banana flower seems to be a little time consuming job initially. Once you know the technique of it, its a matter of few minutes and you will nail it easily everytime you buy.
- Rub your hands with little oil while doing this job as your hands might turn sticky and black during this process.
- Open the purple petals one by one and take out the yellow colour florets carefully.
- Remove the two parts from every floret carefully.
- In the picture I added, I showed the two parts that are to be taken out from each floret. One part looks like a plastic ear phone and the other part is a thick long stem with a thick dot on its top.
- Chop the cleaned florets under each petal and immediately put them in a diluted buttermilk in a vessel. This is mainly to prevent colour changing.
- Follow the same process for all the petals till you notice a small cone shaped yellow tender bud. As this tender yellow cone is also highly nutritious, chop them too finely and add it to the vessel. Keep the chopped florets ready.
Vada Batter Preparation
- Wash the dal thoroughly and soak them in warm water for an hour.
- Meantime, clean the banana flower florets and keep the chopped florets ready.
- Grind the dal along with garlic, ginger, dry red chilli, fennel seeds to a coarse paste. Transfer the dal batter into the mixing bowl.
- Add required amount of salt, hing, little rice flour, chopped coriander leaves and curry leaves, finely chopped green chillies, banana flower florets into the vada batter. Drain the chopped banana flower florets from the buttermilk mix and use the diluted water later.
- Simultaneously keep the kadai with oil on medium flame. When you notice slight smoke on top, then the oil is ready for frying.
- Grease the palms with little oil and take a small portion of the batter and make a round pattie shaped vada.
- Gently drop them one by one into the heated oil. Fry them on both sides till they turn golden brown on medium heat.
- Serve the crispy banana flower vada / Vaazhaipoo vadai with a cup of coffee or tea.!!
Tips / Suggestions
- Don't add too much water while grinding. Sprinkle little water which is just enough for grinding.
- Don't fry the vadas on high flame as it will not help in getting golden vadas. It might turn them darker and also the inner part of the vadas might not get cooked perfectly.
- Adjust the number of chillies as per your spice level.
