Vazhai Poo Usili | Banana Flower /Banana Blossom Usili

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Paruppu Usili is the crumbled soft dal which is combined with vegetables to make very delicious Poriyal variety or dry curry. The most common vegetables used for Usili are Banana Flower, Beans and Cluster Beans. Vazhai Poo Usili is one of the traditional recipe in Tamil Brahmin Kitchen. For any auspicious occasions like marriages, we or the caterers always include beans or cluster beans paruppu usili as part of their menu.

To prepare Vazhaipoo for cooking is time consuming and hence the current generation do not prefer to cook it very often even though it is very cheap, healthy and tastier flower for cooking. But this is worth the effort. This Usili goes very well with Mor Kuzhambu, Poricha Kuzhambu or even Vatha Kuzhambu

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There are 2 ways to make this Usili:

Dals are soaked overnight or atleast for 2 hours and ground to paste with red chili and the paste is then crumbled with little oil and added to the steam cooked beans. I have given here this way of making Usili
Soaked dal is ground to fine paste and make small dumplings out of the paste. Steam cook the dumplings and then crumble it with your hand. We can then mix that crumbled dal mixture to the cooked vegetable.

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Recipe card to make Vazhi Poo Usili

Preparing Banana Flower for cooking:

The tricky part is to remove the stamen which is nothing but a hard pink layer found in each florets. This stamen never gets cooked and hence we need to remove the same from the florets. You can easily remove the stamen from the top layers of the florets as the stamen is visible. But once you approach the inner layers, the florets are covered and hence removal of the stamen is little bit difficult.

Here is the tip.. you can hold the bunch of florets on your left hand and rub the face of the florets on your right hand. This will open up the florets and you can remove the stamen easily. We might notice that the color of the bract was in dark pink color when you start the removal of the stamen and once you approach the inner portion the color of the bract changes from dark pink color to the yellow and finally end up with small white bulb. You can stop removing the stamen at this point as the florets in the inner portion will be more tender. We can cut the flower directly without removing the bracts or stamen.

Chop the florets and put them in the butter milk mixed with water as this will keep the color of the florets as white. Otherwise, this become black in color.Here we are going to make Vazhai Poo Paruppu Usuli. It is dhal crumbles on the vegetable/flower. This dhal crumbles gives a wonderful flavor to this curry.

Let's start the cooking now:

- As explained above, we are already ready with our finely chopped Banana flower which we have soaked it in buttermilk +water. Squeeze the chopped banana flower out of the buttermilk and add it to a vessel and pressure cook it with salt. Allow for 2 whistles or steam cook for 10 mins. We can also directly cook this in pan but it will take more time to cook.
- Soak the Dal's in water over night or in hot boiling water for at least 2 hours. Rinse the Dal's and strain the water and grind it in mixer once along with red chilli, hing and salt without adding water

- The ground mixture should be coarse. Heat the oil in the pan, and add the ground paste and keep the flame in low

- Allow the ground paste to cook in oil and it will crumble down into smaller pieces. In a separate pan, heat some oil and add mustard seeds when the oil is hot.

- When the mustard seeds starts to sputter, add the urdhal and fry till it turns into golden brown color. To this add cooked Vazhai Poo (Banana Flower), then add crumbled Dal mixture and mix it well

- Mix the crumbled dal with the cooked banana flower and keep in medium flame for 5 minutes. Then remove the yummy usili from flame.

- The mouth-watering Vazhai Poo(Banana Flower) paruppu usuli is ready to serve. You can also directly mix the Vazhai Poo Paruppu Usuli with the white rice and a spoon of ghee and serve.