Edible Shoots and Leaves
Okay, it has been a while since this happened, but when I went to the International Agriculture Conference at ECHO in December, I had the opportunity to participate in a session on cooking shoots and leaves from tropical (mostly perennial) plants. The best part of it was that we got to eat what we cooked in the end!
I learned a lot about different tropical plants I did not know or did not know you could eat. The woman who taught the class had lived in rural Thailand, where many people will daily gather small handfuls of many different leaves and shoots to prepare in their meals. So, she shared with us some of what she had learned.
First, we went out and collected our ingredients. This is chaya.
Here you can see garlic chives on the left, pepper leaf in the front, and roselle sticking out in the back (I liked roselle - it was tangy, kind of like sorrel):
Below, you can see what we collected spread out on a table. From front to back: passion fruit leaves, pepper leaf, roselle, garlic chives, katuk, and winged bean. In the back, which you probably can't pick out well, are: sweet potato leaves, malabar spinach, and edible fern.
Even before it was cooked, it was all very beautiful to look at!
For me, the coolest thing that we prepared (which I plan to try in Uganda) was banana flower! (Technically, it is the part of the inflorescence containing male flowers, but for ease of describing, I will just call it the flower!) Apparently this tastes best when you use the flower from a cooking banana rather than one from table banana plants. Anyway, you cut the flower - the purple part you see in the picture below:
Then, you peel off all of the purple layers until you are left with an all white part as you see here:
Then, you slice the flower very thinly and soak it in salty water for five minutes. Next, kind of massage it in the water. This part of the process helps get rid of the astringent taste - the taste you get when eating a really green banana. Then, take it out of the water and squeeze out as much water as you can. Personally, I might rinse it again, just to be thorough! After this, we mixed it with fish sauce and toasted sesame seeds and that was it.
Below, you can see some of what we ate. In the front is the salad made from banana flower. In the middle were the things we ate raw: winged bean, pepper leaf, and roselle. Then, in the back left is a salad made from edible fern and shallots and on the back right are steamed chaya and passion fruit leaves.
I learned a lot about different tropical plants I did not know or did not know you could eat. The woman who taught the class had lived in rural Thailand, where many people will daily gather small handfuls of many different leaves and shoots to prepare in their meals. So, she shared with us some of what she had learned.
First, we went out and collected our ingredients. This is chaya.
Here you can see garlic chives on the left, pepper leaf in the front, and roselle sticking out in the back (I liked roselle - it was tangy, kind of like sorrel):
Below, you can see what we collected spread out on a table. From front to back: passion fruit leaves, pepper leaf, roselle, garlic chives, katuk, and winged bean. In the back, which you probably can't pick out well, are: sweet potato leaves, malabar spinach, and edible fern.
Even before it was cooked, it was all very beautiful to look at!
For me, the coolest thing that we prepared (which I plan to try in Uganda) was banana flower! (Technically, it is the part of the inflorescence containing male flowers, but for ease of describing, I will just call it the flower!) Apparently this tastes best when you use the flower from a cooking banana rather than one from table banana plants. Anyway, you cut the flower - the purple part you see in the picture below:
Then, you peel off all of the purple layers until you are left with an all white part as you see here:
Then, you slice the flower very thinly and soak it in salty water for five minutes. Next, kind of massage it in the water. This part of the process helps get rid of the astringent taste - the taste you get when eating a really green banana. Then, take it out of the water and squeeze out as much water as you can. Personally, I might rinse it again, just to be thorough! After this, we mixed it with fish sauce and toasted sesame seeds and that was it.
Below, you can see some of what we ate. In the front is the salad made from banana flower. In the middle were the things we ate raw: winged bean, pepper leaf, and roselle. Then, in the back left is a salad made from edible fern and shallots and on the back right are steamed chaya and passion fruit leaves.
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