Ingredient: Bananas
Category: Fruit
Season: All:
Banana fruit grow in hanging clusters, with up to 20 fruit to a tier (called a hand), and 3-20 tiers to a bunch.
The total of the hanging clusters is known as a bunch, or commercially as a "banana stem", and can weigh from 30?50 kg. The fruit averages 125 g, of which approximately 75% is water and 25% dry matter content.
Each individual fruit (known as a banana or 'finger') has a protective outer layer (a peel or skin) with a fleshy edible inner portion.
Typically, the fruit has numerous strings (called 'phloem bundles') which run between the skin and the edible portion of the banana, and which are commonly removed individually after the skin is removed.
Bananas are a valuable source of vitamin B6, vitamin C, and potassium.
Bananas are grown in at least 107 countries.
In popular culture and commerce, "banana" usually refers to soft, sweet "dessert" bananas that are usually eaten raw.
The bananas from a group of cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit are called plantains, and are generally used in cooking rather than eaten raw. Bananas may also be dried and eaten as a snack food. Dried bananas are also ground into banana flour.
A little bit of heaven is a ripe, fragrant, soft-fleshed banana, mashed with a fork with just a little brown sugar and piled on to thick slices of buttered crusty wholemeal bread,with a cup of freshly brewed tea, can give anyone renewed strength in the middle of a working day
When choosing bananas
Remember that to be ripe enough to eat, the skins must be all yellow with no green bits near the stalk. Also, the riper they are the better they taste! sweeter and more fragrant.
A really ripe and ready-to-eat banana will have little brown freckles on its yellow skin, but be warned: ripe and ready means just that, so eat it soon or it might be a little too ripe tomorrow!
Remember, too, that bananas come from hot countries and hate the cold, so never, ever put them in the fridge, as the shock of it turns them black.
Bananas also tend to discolour if they are exposed to the air, so if you are preparing them for a recipe they should be tossed in lemon juice if they have to wait around. However, when they're submerged and cut off from the air they stay creamy white with no problem. |