Making the Most of Banana January 2009
The chef and the buyer
Hotel Chef and Head Buyer
Summary:
A chef at Mombasa's Leisure Lodge Hotel describes some of the many banana-based foods being served in the hotel restaurants. These include soups, salads, desserts and main courses: guests are surprised at just how many uses banana can be put to, and the tasty results. The hotel's head storekeeper buys about 60kgs of bananas every day, and he describes what he looks for to get the best quality.
Suggested introduction:
There are nearly 1,000 varieties of banana in the world today, some eaten fresh and others cooked. Tourist hotels in Kenya, like the Mombasa Leisure Lodge, are increasingly using bananas in their dishes, and it's amazing how versatile they are.
To find out just how widely bananas are being used, Sydney Phiri visited the Leisure Lodge kitchens to meet one of the chefs. Afterwards, he spoke to the hotel's head buyer, who explained what he looked for in a perfect banana.
Tape in:
There are 101 things you can do with a...
Tape out:
...we go for the green and long, healthy.
Closing Announcement:
Sydney Phiri, finding out about bananas at the Leisure Lodge hotel in Mombasa, Kenya.
Making the most of it:
Record a vox pop on what shoppers look for when they buy bananas.
Invite listeners to phone in with their favourite banana recipes.
Transcript
Chef
There are 101 things you can do with a banana, as you saw. You can make matooke soup, which is very delicious, even the guests, they could not imagine how you could get a soup out of banana. We have salads from banana. We have cold dishes from banana like the tilapia, remember the tilapia which was rolled with the banana, a very delicious dish. Then we have main courses, hot food where you have like the chicken and beef combined with banana. This was a mind-boggling dish for the guests, they could not really understand how we could bring such a thing. And then we also had mainly chicken, chicken and jack fruit with banana, and of course the desserts. We have the mousses from banana, we have éclairs from banana, it's a big variety.
Mwange
My name is Phillip Mwange. I'm the head store keeper, and concerning bananas, we buy a lot of bananas, especially the ripe bananas, for our guests. We buy about 60 kilos every day. It's one of the most, the fast moving item, second or third fast moving item pertaining perishables. When you go for the quality it's like choosing a lady. You know, you first you check the texture of the skin, it's quite very smooth, very fresh, that is whereby we go for the good quality, but there are some which are over-ripe we don't go for that. So we go for fresh bananas. And for the matooke we go for the green and long, healthy. End of track.
