The above is a photo of the flower of the banana. Usually, after the bananas have formed, it will still have a purplish watchacallit thingie. The Malays call it jantung pisang or heart of the banana. It is the part of the flowers which did not form into banana. The purplish layers will drop off layer by layer, revealing tiny yellow flower which is full of nectar. The nector is gel like and sweet. I know ‘coz I ate those when I was a kid. There wasn’t pesticides and toxic chemicals then. Don’t do it now ‘cos you may die of poison chemicals. The above are honey bees and not flies, ok?
Back in the kampung, my mom would pluck on of these banana flowers, peel of several layers of the purple thingie and then, steam it. After steaming, the purplish colour becomes brown, of course.
Jantung pisang is a nice dish serves with sambal belacan.
I do not know how to describe the taste except that it is tender, not much taste but lemak a bit and excellent with sambal belacan.
The price of rice has increased so much, now I feel really guilty when I cannot finish my rice. Do you know that not only the prices increase but the local supermarkets and hypermarket has no stock of the cheaper rice? Meanwhile, they slaughter us who buy the Thai fragrant rice. It costs RM42 for 10kg now when previously, it was only RM25 when there is a sale.
So, we must go back to our kampungs, tanam pisang, tanam jagung, tanam ubi kayu to avoid starvation already. Damn, I am getting political on my food blog again. LOL.
(P/S : I did not survive solely on rice, jantung pisang and that green vege. I have a huge ikan terubok for lunch but it is not shown on the photo, ok? But if you feel kesian and wish to donate some PayPal to me, just ask! Hahaha)
Hi Lillian, I have tried boiling the jantung then slicing it to make a salad before. I followed the instructions from a nyonya recipe book. But the jantung was super bitter. It tasted quite horrible. Any idea why?
When I was in primary school my school mates fed me stories of banana flower/tree/fruit ghost. Maybe that is why I refuse to eat anything banana except goreng pisang 🙂
First time in ur nyummy2 food blog. I always love to eat Jantung Pisang.Usually I cooked the jantung pisang with salted fish, add cili padi and a lilttle bit coconut milk..Fuhh!! 2 bowls of rice won’t be enough.
If i were Bihye, i will rebus the jantung pisang first. Don’t forget to add salt too. It won’t taste bitter after.
lilian….. we normally buy beras wangi cap naga or cap rambutan at RM28.00 for 10kg. now it cost us RM50.00 for 10kg. gila betul. it has been 5 days we do not really eat rice. we had pizza, porridge, pie but not proper rice.
Yatie – Yalor, so frightening lah, the price increase. Hey, I am eating the same rice as well, the cap rambutan in pink bags. Pasta also increased to more than RM5 per pack when it used to be RM3.
kadusmama – WOW, sedapnyerrrr….I must try to cook it one of this day. And thanks for telling us how to prepare it.
agnes – I heard of those stories too. Hahaha, tie a string on a banana trunk to your window and the red dress ghost can come to your room.
bihye – Thanks to kadusmama, now you know. Hope you get it right this time. I will try to cook this dish and see.
1. A small advice on first time jantung pisang cooks, add a pinch of salt in the water; not only does it speed up the boiling, it adds a little bit of taste to your jantung pisang too.
2. Rice, rice – so bloody expensive these days. Blame should be on the Agriculture Department for not working hand-in-hand with the Meteorology Department (to look for weather trends) & NGOs (I’m sure there’s a lot out there looking at Environmental Impacts). Anyway, maybe we should try this little mix I found whilst vacationing in South Korea so many donkey years ago. Mix the rice with barley, its gonna taste funky at first, but you know the barley has a bit of lemak (that’s why the joke about ‘barley juak’ being likened to err… male discharges) and then the whatever rice that you have now in the market happens to not have so much lemak or stickiness to it. To make it all fragrant, add 2-3 knots of pandan leave, voila rice expenditure savings. Btw, barley not so expensive right? 🙂