Subbus Kitchen

Vazhaithandu(Plantain stem) Poritha kuzhambu is a delicious dish prepared in southern part of tamilnadu.

• Remove the outer rings of the stem so that there are no more rings seen in the cross section.
• Cut the stem into thin disks. Remove the fibers between the disks by one of your fingers.It is the most frustrating part of preparing banana stem for cooking :-)

Raw Banana stem

Banana stem - Sliced

• Slice the disks into a smaller pieces and immerse the same in the butter milk and water mixture as this will preserve the original color of the stem otherwise this will turn out to be black in color
  

  Banana stem - chopped

  Banana stem - in the buttermilk-water mixture

• Cook the thurdal in the pressure cooker till soft and smash the Dal.
• Soak the raw rice in water for sometime.
• Cook Vazhaithandu(Plantain stem) in a heavy bottomed pan by adding water along with a pinch of turmeric and salt
• In a separate pan pour the oil and add the red chillies and pepper and fry for a minute and grind these along with coconut, jeeragam and raw rice soaked in water to a fine paste

Ingredients for grinding

Ground paste with dhal

• Add these ground paste to the Vazhaithandu(Plantain stem) once they are cooked.
• Add curd once the kuzhambu starts to boil and then stir it well and switch off the flame.


• In a separate pan, pour the oil and add mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds begins to sputter add the urdhal and fry it until it becomes red color and then add curry leaves. Add these ingredients to the kuzhambu

• Now the Poritha Kuzhambu is ready to serve with plain Rice.