When I made my recent very short stop into China town in London and picked up a few ingredients like Chinese garlic chives I also picked up a bag of these, banana leaves because I’ve never used them before, which is like a red rag to a bull with me, I have cupboards full of items I’ve never used before still waiting to be used…just as well they have a long shelf life!
These bananas leaves looked beautiful, too pretty to cook with, and if you’re like me and you adore handmade paper and can’t help but be tactile with things then you’ll spread these out on your table and won’t be able to resist and run your hand over them thinking about the sorts of foods you could serve on them using the leaves as serving platters.
After a couple of e-mails to Sunflower I had set on using the chicken I had in the fridge whole, marinating it first with Thai style paste; lemon grass, lime zest, ground coriander, ground cumin, garlic, fresh coriander, fresh ginger, palm sugar, basil, wrapping it up in bananas leaves, covering with foil and baking it in the oven.
Sunflower’s suggestion was using fish or small pieces of chicken over a bbq…good advice Sunflower…and that’s how I’ll be trying it next time. What I found out was a whole chicken took much…much longer to cook than the hour and a quarter I was calculating, in fact to speed up the cooking in the end I had to open the parcel which sort of defeats the object of cooking the chicken in the parcel…so yes…next time it shall be using small pieces or fish or if trying a whole bird again then I need to prepare myself to a much longer cooking time…on the upside of opening the parcel it meant the chicken had a nice colour which you wouldn’t have from steaming. Now we are entering bbq season I will be giving the banana leaf treatment a second trial. I think the charcoal flavour of the bbq would maximise the flavour the bananas leaves would impart on the end result.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Beautiful roast. Looking at all the spices used and also the banana leaves used, I can just imagine how delicious this chicken is. We use a lot of banana leaves back home in Malaysia for making desserts. Here in UK, I seldom buy them. It’s very good for use when grilling fish on the BBQ stove.
I’ve never tried anything cooked in banana leaves. I’m sure it would help keep it moist and delicious.
It looks lovely though! It’s good to know you can get banana leaves in Chinatown. There is a Rick Stein recipe I’ve been wanting to try but I didn’t know where to get the leaves!
Foodycat
I found them in the main Chinatown street the largest of the supermarkets there, wrapped in plastic and lots of them too much for a single recipe, it would be great to use for family & friends. I’m certainly going to use them again on the bbq with fish but I have come across a recipe for Balinese Duck ( Bebek Betutu) that I’m very tempted by.
MaryMoh
I’ve been wondering since you mentioned Malaysia desserts made with the leaves what kind of desserts they would be?