Balakaya (raw banana) thoran

• Servings: 4
• Preparation time: 10 minutes.
• Cooking time: 15 minutes.
• Seasoning time: 5 minutes.
• Total time: 30 minutes.

My favorite traditional dish from south India; topped with signature herbs, combining the aromatic flavour of curry leaves red chilli, dry coconut gives the wonderful taste and is healthy too. Relish the recipe…

Ingredients:

• Raw banana: 2 no. (Medium size, vegetable verity)
• Onion: 1 no.
• Madras onion (small variety): 10-12 no.
• Green coriander leaves: 2 tablespoon (chopped)
• Garlic: 2-3 flakes
• Green chilli: 1 no.
• Dry coconut: ¼ no.
• Coconut oil/cooking oil: 2 table spoon
• Salt: 1 teaspoon (as per taste)
• Mustard seed: ½ teaspoon
• Red chilli: 1 no.
• Curry leaves: 1 twig
• Asafoetida: 1 pinch
• Turmeric powder: ½ teaspoon

Preparation:

1. Chop madras onion, keep aside.
2. Roughly chop and grind onion, along with coconut, green chilli and garlic to paste, Keep aside.
3.  Peel off banana, slice longitudinally into 2-3”pieces, keep aside.

Method:

1. Boil/ microwave it (just required quantity of water so that there is no water left after boiling); add prepared paste, curry leaves, turmeric powder and a tablespoon of oil  into it, stir and cook for couple of minutes, put off the flame, keep aside.

Seasoning:

1. Take fry pan, put oil; when it smokes, add mustard seeds, red chilli and asafoetida wait till it sputters.
2. Add chopped onion; stir fry until it gets light brown in colour, put off the flame.
3.  Add this seasoning and chopped green coriander leaves into prepared banana sabji, stir and transfer in to serving bowl; serve this as a side dish at lunch or dinner.

Balakaya (raw banana) thoran by Nag Ratna Sahu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.