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Banana blossom

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PlainName:
Walking around the (now non-)oil aisle of the local supermarket I noticed cans of banana blossom. A partial read of the label suggests they could be used instead of meat or fish(!) and even gives a recipe for battering and frying them to then serve with chips. So I got a can to see what it's like, and then forgot about it.

But last night I remembered so we had them out to look. Sorry, no photos, but if you search the web for banana blossom these are nothing at all like that! OK, same shape but they are kind of orangey pink. Of course, we didn't know that at the time because I didn't look 'em up until after, so I had a nibble and they seemed a bit bland apart from being a bit astringent.

Next, I fried some but that was worse. Now they had some flavour to be bitter. So I did the creamed eggs trick and fried some in cream. Hmmm. Salt and pepper was getting good, but still bitter, and I figured what we could actually taste was nice salted cream with a bitter addition.

So, next I shoved the rest in a pan of boiling water with lemon juice, after which they were much better. Still bland but now only a slightly bitter aftertaste. Hmmm. End of experiment and top-up for hens' compost heap.

A quick web search suggests that they shouldn't be bitter at all, and if you get some that are there is nothing you can do about it - it's the plant that's off rather than the cooking. Can't believe they would go off in 'fresh' cans and if that really is the case it could be expensive to find some that are OK (you can't really test them before buying, although I've seen the results of gits that do test stuff in supermarkets before deciding not to buy).

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