"Mocha'r ghonto" - thoughts on cooking banana florets

I have posted a few times about food in my blog here, but I am not going to post any recipes because I don't want to make this anywhere close to a food blog. I have seen how contents of food blogs are copied from one blog to another, actually word to word, but both (or multiple) authors claiming that her recipe is handed down in her family through generations!! 

Anyway, I have found a lot of joy in re-creating traditional Bengali foods in my kitchen far-away from the rivers and paddy fields of Bengal. There are certain dishes, though, which can be called, in simple language, "advanced". It is like learning the butterfly stroke after you are comfortable with the other three swimming strokes. This week I handled the thing called "mocha". Don't confuse with the coffee stuff, this is what we call banana flowers in Bengali. And heck yes, they are edible.

A whole mocha

This is how a raw whole mocha looks like. The flowers are concealed within layers of purplish firm and smooth skin. As you separate the layers, the florets will be seen. This is the hardest part of cooking this thing. The florets can't just be separated and chopped, they need to be cleaned and sorted individually, by hand. 

Rows of florets

Every floret has one stamen and one small covering along with the petals. That stamen and the covering are not edible. I was wondering who first came up with this. Maybe they cooked it and it tasted bad? Or it was too hard and they couldn't chew or swallow it? Who knows the original reason now? But this method of cleaning and sorting has been passed down through generations in the Bengali kitchens from mother to daughter (or mother-in-law to daughter-in-law). Nowadays we also have YouTube to our rescue.

Before starting the process, we need to rub a little oil on our hands so that the juice doesn't stick or stain them. Traditionally it has always been mustard oil that is used for this purpose, so I chose that. Also, we need to keep a big bowl of turmeric water handy. Once the florets are cleaned and chopped, they are soaked in turmeric water overnight. A little salt is also added to that.

See the big bowl of turmeric water to my left and the small bowl of golden mustard oil to the right.

After an overnight soak, the next morning the whole thing is boiled for like 10-15 minutes before it is ready to be cooked. Generally the other ingredients needed are - lightly fried potato cubes, bengal gram (that is also soaked overnight and boiled later), grated coconut, ghee, daler bori*, and general spices like cumin, dried red chillies, and bright green or red chillies for garnishing. 

The dish has a huge prep work but as all the ingredients are pre-cooked, the actual cooking process is quite easy and fast. It needs a little water to boil all the stuff together and a quick stirring for few minutes. Finally, you can add a teaspoon of ghee for flavor, garnish with some more grated coconut and add a few green or red chilis to make it look good! The best thing is you can serve the dish on one of the purple skins of the mocha itself. 

The finished product!

*PS: Daler bori is a conical shaped thing made out of lentil paste that is dried in the Sun. Dal means lentil. Once dried, those are deep fried till crispy and ground up to add a little extra crunch to this vegetable dish.