Let's Do . . .Organic
Green Banana Flour
The veggie journo life is one of constant discovery. Take green banana flour. Who knew that peeling, chopping, drying, and then grinding green bananas could yield such a useful, healthy flour? Actually, lots of people did — and for more than 100 years. They tended to live in Jamaica, Central America and Africa.
In very recent years, it took three magic phrases to bring green banana flour to our shores (actually to our stores.). Those phrases are gluten-free, paleo and resistant starch. We are told that resistant starch like high fiber is pretty good for digestion. And as the FDA so poetically put it in 2016, “there is limited credible scientific evidence for a qualified health claim for high-amylose maize resistant starch and reduced risk of type 2 diabetes.”
We are not nutritionists, dietitians or any kind of scientist here. We are gluttons who are chomping our way through the universe of plant-based eats. So, here’s what Wikipedia says about resistant starch.
And here’s what we have to say about Let’s Do . . .Organics’s green banana flour.
Hmm. Pretty good.
We base this assessment on our quasi-scientific experiment. Namely, we made pancakes with green banana flour and this recipe from the Edward & Sons website. (Let's Do . . . Organic is an Edward & Sons company.)
This flour is dense and powdery. The package suggests that when using recipes that call for normal flour, we should use about 25% less than the specified amount. Good to know.
This recipe calls for equal parts green banana flour and almond milk, among the other ingredients. We used Silk unsweetened coconut milk instead. We were somehow out of baking powder so we used baking soda (making sure we used about four times the specified amount). Instead of coconut sugar, we used Rigoni di Asiago Dolcedì (sweetener from organic apples). Whisk in hand, we easily blended the ingredients.
So much for the overture.
There we were with a mixing bowl full of dark brown batter and a non-stick fry pan sprayed with vintage Trader Joe Coconut oil. We poured three ladles of batter onto the hot pan and waited— not too long. Those telltale pancakes-are-on-their-way bubbles started to appear. It soon was time to flip over. Also time to turn those little misshapen circles of dough over. A couple minutes elapsed and we removed our creations from the griddle. By Jove, they looked and felt like pancakes — light and fluffy. We hastened to add syrup. And again they scored. They tasted like pancakes with a bit of attitude. The slightly earthy taste reminded us of buckwheat pancakes.
The experiment was a success. We proclaim Let's Do...Organic green banana flour to be FWB, flour with benefits. For more information, click here.