Coming to the Northwest in months 3-4, especially Moc Chau, you should try dishes made from banana flowers, which are not only beautiful but also delicious.
Banana flowers, banana buds will be skillfully removed from the branches, choose healthy cotton, not rotten, crumbled and blanched to drain. Many people meticulously remove the stalk to reduce acridness, but there are also people who like to eat the whole stalk because they like the acrid taste, fleshy but crispy. The finished product will depend on the dishes that are processed. Here are a few banana dishes in Moc Chau that tourists can enjoy this season.
Forest vegetable banana flower mannequin
May 3-4 is also the time when field vegetables, forest vegetables are abundant, people often pick mistletoe, the smell of ships, vegetables, centella asiatica, forest shoots ... and many other unnamed vegetables to be washed, put on pots and things. Ripe vegetables, mixed with blanched banana flowers, seasoned with spices, mixed with a little pounded roasted peanuts are into a wild vegetable banana flower dish, both cool, sweet and fragrant.
Image: Dong Hai Restaurant
Stir-fried banana flowers with bitter bamboo shoots, beef
Thai people have a legend about the love story of a couple who fell in love but could not marry each other, went to find each other and died turning into a banana tree, bitter bamboo shoots. Strangely, this bamboo shoot eaten alone is bitter, but eaten with banana flowers is less bitter and sweeter, more fleshy. Slice the bamboo shoots thinly lengthwise, stir-fry and then pour the lightly stir-fried beef, then add the banana flowers to stir through, add a little garlic, the smell of ships. Laid out on a plate, the smell of bamboo shoots, the smell of meat mixed together is amazingly fragrant. This dish is very suitable to eat on cold rainy Moc Chau days.
Bone soup cooking banana flowers
This soup was also created by Thai people a long time ago. The flowers picked are washed, each branch is picked up and dropped into a pot of simmered bone broth, there are some thinly sliced bamboo shoots, wild vegetables and a little pounded glutinous rice. Thai people rarely eat soup and boiled food, mainly they make dishes, grill, bury ashes, guard the kitchen, so the soup must also be cooked gelatinous without letting the water sink like other places. So the pot of banana blossom soup is smoky, boiling at the time of shooting, a mixture of rice, banana flowers and bitter bamboo shoots, which looks very attractive.
Banana flower salad
In Moc Chau today, locals and some restaurants also make strawberry banana flower salad. Flowers mixed with raw vegetables, strawberries and seasoned to taste are a cool, sweet, beautiful salad plate. This is suitable for playing, appetizers and heat protection for the month of 3-4, when the hot Lao winds begin.
Image: Chengdao
Visitors to Moc Chau as well as many other banana areas will be amazed at the creativity in Thai cuisine. In addition to the above dishes, the flowers of the mountains and forests are also processed into grilled fish stuffing, hot pot dip, sticky rice ... and countless ways to mix with other food to create other delicious, nutritious and beautiful dishes that attract diners.
Note:
When traveling to Moc Chau in the banana season, avoid cutting flowers, breaking branches, uprooting trees so that the banana forests become thicker and more beautiful, adorning the mountains and forests of the Northwest. In the past, banana flowers were obtained by everyone, many homestays and restaurants had dishes from banana flowers. But from 2021, banana flowers are limited to picking, only a few units can get and ban planted in the yards and gardens of families in the remote village have enough banana flowers to serve tourists. If you want to enjoy dishes from ban flowers, you can go to homestays in Vat village, Ang village or Dong Hai Moc Chau restaurant.
According to VnE