How to cleaning "Vazhaipoo / Plantian flower or Banana blossom"

Banana blossom has a brackish taste with immense health benefits. It is an excellent source of fiber & used to control  excessive pain and bleeding during menstrual cycles. My mom used to cook this once in a month and it is very tasty when cleaned and cooked properly but cleaning, is really a time consuming task  but considering health benefit we have to add to this to our diet at least once in two or three months.

Choosing the banana flower:

The stem or top portion of the flower must be in pale white colour ( here in US, we cant find pale white as we get in back home, just pick one with little discoloration as shown in above picture and should not be in dry black colour).

Cleaning the flower:

• Apply cooking oil to your hands, so sap wont stick to your hands even though it is not harmful but takes some time to get ride off.
• Wash the whole flower & gently peel off the outer bracts- Redish leaf like portion.
• Just pluck and gather all small flowers which is under the bracts. This can be done to certain limit only, then flower will be too tiny to pluck so leave the cone part.
• Hold the flower between forefinger, middle finger and thumb. this position will be easy to remove petal & stamen.
• Carefully open each flower or blossom, you can see the plastic textured petal & a hard stamen which must be snapped and removed entirely from the base. These parts cannot be cooked even in tender stage.
• Discard the petal & hard stamen and collect all the soft flower.
• Can be stored in zip loc for later use in refrigerator.

Before preparing banana flower for any dishes.

• Take 2 cups of water or required water and add ¼ cup of buttermilk or 2tbsp of curd to it and keep it aside.
• Chop the cleaned plantain flower and the cone in to desire size & immediately immerse the flower into the buttermilk water to avoid oxidation.
• Soak it for ½ hour.
• Drain & Squeeze the excess water & keep it ready to prepare the dish.