• In Eastern Africa you can buy banana beer. This beer is brewed from bananas.
• The word ‘banan’ is Arabic for finger.
• There are more than 500 varieties of banana in the world.
• If you rub a mosquito bite with the inside of a banana skin, it reduces swelling and irritation.
• According to “The New England Journal of Medicine” eating bananas as part of a regular diet can help reduce the risk of death by stroke by as much as 40%.
• Bananas can help sufferers of Seasonal Affective Disorder because they contain the natural mood enhancer, tryptophan.
• Many cultures see bananas as a “cooling” fruit that can lower emotional and physical temperature of expectant mothers. In Thailand, pregnant women eat bananas to ensure their babies are born with a cool temperature.
Nutrition:
Bananas are low in calories, fat, sodium, and soluble fiber, which is the type of fiber that can help lower cholesterol. Bananas also contain 452 milligrams of potassium, 33 milligrams of magnesium, and one-third of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin B6.
Banana Curried Chicken
INGREDIENTS:
• 2 onions-chopped
• 50 milliliters cooking oil
• ¼ cup cake flour
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 pounds cooked, boned chicken—(cooked with seasoning)
• 5 sliced bananas
• 2 grated apples
• 2 tablespoons grated lemon rind
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 and ½ tablespoons curry powder
• 1 bay leaf
• 4 peppercorns
• 1 cup cream
Fry onions in oil until light brown. Add flour and mix well. Add chicken stock gradually while stirring. Add the rest of the ingredients, except cream, cover saucepan and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove bay leaf. Mix in cream just before serving. Serve on a bed of rice. Decorate with pineapples if preferred.
Banana Sunset
INGREDIENTS:
• 8 very ripe bananas
• 2 tablespoons rum
• 2 tablespoons honey
• ½ pound butter
• 3 ounces raisins
• 2 ounces cherries
• 4 eggs
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ pound flour
• ¾ pint milk
• ½ tablespoon lime juice
• 1 ounce mixed nuts
• ½ teaspoon vanilla
• ½ cup grated coconut
Cream bananas and sugar, add eggs beaten well. Add milk, vanilla, lime juice, and flour. Mix well. Add raisins, cherries, and nuts, blend slightly. Turn out mixture in 9 inch baking dish. Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Allow to cool. Cover top with whipped cream and coconut. Decorate with six carambola slices.
Banana snack industry goes stale
Not so long ago, the Central Java town of Majenang was famous for being the home of sale pisang, a unique snack made with bananas, but recently the market changed and the local snack industry faded to a fraction of its former success.
Majenang, one of 23 districts in Cilacap regency in the far west of the province - bordering with Banjar and Ciamis regencies in West Java - has about 30 small factories producing the snack.
Before the 1998 economic crisis, there were around 100 such producers, leading Cilacap administration to come up with the idea of making the snack the icon of Majenang.
But with the crisis, the plan hit snags and many cottage industries were forced out of business. More than a decade later, the situation has yet to improve.
"Before the crisis I could sell 2 or 3 tons of fried banana sweets to Jakarta. But things are difficult now," Yayat, a 61-year-old sale pisang business owner, told The Jakarta Post in Majenang.
Today, Yayat produces only about 200 kilograms of sale pisang a month, and 99 percent of this is sold in Majenang. The snacks are sold in 250-gram packages, each costing around Rp 25,000 (US$2).
Another snack producer, Juremi, said that before the crisis she could send 2 tons of sale pisang to Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya each month.
"Now we only sell sale pisang for the local market," the 60-year-old said.
Juremi said most of the snack producers were struggling to survive.
"What's important is that business survives. If there are buyers in the city, that's enough. Sometimes we get an order from outside the city, but this is unreliable," she said.
"Once, a distributor from outside the city wanted to place an order, but the price he offered was too low to cover our production costs. Rather than suffering losses, we preferred not to take it."
Making sale pisang does not take long. Ripe bananas are cut into slices and dried in the sun.
"If the sun is bright, the bananas will dry out in two days. But in a rainy season like this, it takes about four days," Juremi said.
The dried bananas are then smeared with flour and deep-fried. After being drained, the banana chips are ready to be packaged and sold.
The sale pisang business has supported many, including farmers and traders who sell raw bananas to cottage industries in Majenang, as well as banana snack makers such as Juremi and Yayat, and the vendors.
Majenang district head, Heru Susedyo, said he was aware of the stagnant business situation.
"Sale pisang was once so popular that the Cilacap administration planned to make it the icon of Majenang city, but the plan could not be realized because sales keep decreasing."
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/03/06/
Thursday 15 January 2009
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