Making banana flour and processing jackfruit
As our upcoming course has a number of vegans attending, I needed to make some more banana flour. Usually I make cakes for morning tea using nuts like bunya nuts and eggs. Nutflour needs the binding power of eggs to make a nice cake in most instances, but as vegans do not eat eggs I will bake more with banana and other flours.
Banana flour is high in resistant starch which is a pre-biotic and good for most people’s gut. (People with existing gut issues can be the exception to this…) It is easy to make your own if you have access to green bananas, the resistant starch is only present in bananas when they are green. The ripening process consumes the starch. Due to the high starch content, the flour is easy to work with and binds nicely without any eggs (just add a bit of bicarb and an acid like vinegar to make it rise).
Chopping the green bananas to make flour for the upcoming Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course
You will need to peel the banana with a knife as it is too difficult to peel by hand. Cut it into small pieces and dehydrate until dry and hard (I dehydrate all my food at temperatures below 43C, as this keeps the enzymes intact). I then grind the pieces in my Vitamix blender, pulsing at high speed. The resulting banana flour is a fine consistency and can be used the same as other flours in baking. Stay tuned for a banana cake recipe soon!
Resistant starch and pre-biotic, the green banana flour is ready for baking!
Tom and I also spent a couple of hours preparing a ginormous jackfruit. We cut the jackfruit after oiling the knives and our hands with olive oil (the latex in jackfruit is extremely sticky!) We separated the fruit into three bowls: one with the seeds, one with the fruit surrounding the seed and one with the stringy bit between the fruit. The stringy bits are great for smoothies! We will use the jackfruit in next week’s Permaculture Design Certificate course in smoothies and the seeds in a curry or the like!
Jackfruit prepping for freezing, fruit, seeds and strings from left to right
©2016 Zaia; permeco.org, incorporating Permaculture Research Institute Sunshine Coast, simplicity, permaculture, self reliance, self sufficiency, sustainability, food, health and homesteading, Preparing jackfruit and making banana flour.
Author: Zaia Kendall
Zaia grew up in a family of musicians in Holland, and has a background in top sport (snow skiing) and web development and design. She co-founded the PRI Luganville and PRI Sunshine Coast Inc (now PermEco Inc.) with Tom, and runs the “invisible structures”, like finances, business administration, website design and maintenance, writes articles and records and edits videos. She assists Tom in running the Kendall Permaculture Farm and supervising other volunteers. She is an active member of several musical projects and bands, involved in community music and runs percussion and marimba workshops, is the percussion leader for the Woodford Folk Festival People’s Orchestra and composes as well as plays music. She is passionate about community music and loves seeing people discover that they can play!
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