Kulawo

Banana heart dressed in coconut milk made from coconut burnt black over a flame first.

Vegan.

Ingredients

2 banana hearts, about 800 g
1 whole coconut, halved, in the shell
300 ml hot water
80 ml vinegar
6 garlic cloves, crushed
40 g fresh ginger, grated
1 onion, thinly sliced
6 siling labuyo, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon salt, for the soaking water

Method

THE COCONUT IS BURNT BLACK OVER A FLAME BEFORE IT IS GRATED, and that is the dish. Hold the halved coconut, flesh side down, directly over a gas flame or on embers for 6 to 8 minutes, until the surface is properly charred and smoking. Then grate it, char and all, and press the milk out with the hot water. Grated raw, you have a banana heart salad in coconut milk, which is a different and much duller thing.
Do not stop at brown. It needs to be black in patches or the smoke does not come through the dressing.
Banana heart: strip the tough purple bracts off until the pale core shows, slice it thin, and drop it straight into water with the tablespoon of salt. It browns as fast as banana pith does.
Squeeze the sliced heart hard in the salted water, drain, and repeat in fresh water. This takes out the sap, which is astringent and stains.
Blanch it 3 minutes in boiling water, drain, and squeeze it dry in a cloth. Water left in it thins the dressing.
Grate the charred coconut, add the 300 ml of hot water, let it stand 10 minutes, then wring it out through muslin. The milk will be grey and smell of smoke. That is right.
Mix the smoked milk with the vinegar, garlic, ginger, onion, chillies and the teaspoon of salt.
Fold the banana heart through it. Nothing is cooked from here.
Rest 30 minutes before eating so the vinegar gets into the heart, and taste again at that point. Eat it the same day.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes