A Phool For You

The banana flower.

I often eat little-known produce. It started, as many of my adventures do, with a trip to the bazaar. Many years ago, after a pig-out at Madras Cafe, I decided to build my appetite for the next meal by scouring Matunga’s vegetable market. I already knew that you could buy a mean baby mango-hing achaar, and crunchy haaplas (the South Indian equivalent of papad) at the market (that’s a whole other post). What came across for the first time however, was something that looked like purple corn. I lifted the leaf covering the cob to see the kernels; it turned out that there were baby banana flowers under them. I saw little florets, hoping to become fruit, but now, all destined to become saag. Also called (rather unfortunately) vazhai poo by Tamilians, who love eating them, the banana flower is a piece of work. That’s not just a cliché, these little buds take effort to prepare. Each little bud (which would have become a sweet banana in time) contains a bitter stamen than needs to be removed. The fragrant flowers, sans stamens, are delicious in a yoghurt-based curry, or in cutlets with spices like mustard seeds and asafoetida. Oh, and they are also part of traditional Thai food.

But there are blossoms beyond bananas. Suran ke phool, or elephant yam flowers, available from Khar vegetable market, or outside Kailash Parbat in Colaba at the Sindhi thelewala, make for a great fish substitute. The texture matches that of seafood or really tender lamb even. Cooked Sindhi-style in a tomato-onion-ginger-garlic-curry leaf sauce, they shine. You won’t miss your surmai or bombil. You can make a faux-fish-tikka and your guests won’t miss the lack of seafood in these no-fish-eating, monsoon months.

Unlike the large, meaty yam flowers, drumstick blossoms are dainty but equally delicious. These delicate flowers are almost like little jasmine buds. Like banana petals, they need to be cleaned, but here, we are not looking for a bitter stamen; we are looking for worms. After spending a couple of hours cleaning a kilo, I put them in raita to bring out their umami, mushroom-like aroma, or in cutlets with potatoes to balance both flavour and texture, or maybe even in a saag with minimal additional flavouring such as mustard seeds, garlic and ginger. It’s worth the effort. Eating drumstick blossoms is said to benefit people with inflammations and fevers. A Sindhi delicacy, I get them from the same guy in Colaba who sells yam flowers.

Mugri may not be a bloom but it is another fun, salad or stir-fry ingredient. A sibling of the radish, mugri is known to the Western world by the unfortunate name of rat-tail radish. (Germans especially love to munch on them as a snack to go along with their beer.) In India, these slender, bean-like pods are a favourite of Maharashtrians who use them in quick stir fries with things like garlic or coconut and chillies. You feel like you are eating radish, but with the texture of a French bean, or a stalk of asparagus. They taste best when finely chopped and used in salads. You can buy them at Grant Road bhaji gully.

And now we get to what happens after the flowers are pollinated. Lotus seeds are a Sindhi snack. Dodi, as Sindhis call them, are little rajma-sized bites of nutty deliciousness. They come in spongy, conical pods, the seeds jewelling their emerald pouches. You pluck out each seed, peel it, split it, and like the banana flower, pick out the bitter stamen and pop the dodi in your mouth. The Sindhi vegetable vendors at Khar and Colaba have them. Makhanas or phool batashas, the more well-known popped lotus seeds, make a luscious popcorn substitute, and melt on your tongue when used in a tomato-based curry.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food writer who recently earned her toque at the French Culinary Institute in New York.