Daun Pisang = Banana Leaf

Daun Pisang  =  Banana Leaf

Banana leaves serve many purposes in Asian cooking, from adding flavor to foods cooked inside them, to simply being used as a colorful and exotic background for serving-plates and party platters. Banana leaves are beautiful, fun to use, and easy to cook with!

Banana leaves used in cuisine are generally large, flexible, and waterproof.[3] When cooking food with or serving or wrapping food with banana leaves, they may confer an aroma to the food leaves; steaming with banana leaves imparts a subtle sweet flavour to the dish.[4]

The leaves contain the juices, protect food from burning and add a subtle flavor.[5] In Tamil Nadu (India) leaves are fully dried and used as packing material for food stuffs and also making cups to hold liquid foods. The dried leaves are called 'Vaazhai-ch- charugu' (வாழைச் சருகு) in Tamil. Some South Indian, Filipino and Khmer recipes use banana leaves as a wrapper for frying. The leaves are later removed to retain flavor. In Vietnamese cuisine, banana leaves are used to wrap foods such as cha-lua.

In Indonesian cuisine, banana leaf is employed in cooking method called pepes and botok; the banana leaf packages containing food ingredients and spices are cooked on steam, in boiled water or grilled on charcoal. Banana leaves are also used to wrap several kinds of snacks kue (delicacies), such as nagasari or kue pisang and otak-otak, and also to wrap pressed sticky rice delicacies such as lemper and lontong.

In Java, banana leaf is also used as a coned plate called "pincuk", usually to serve rujak tumbuk, pecel or satay. The pincuk is made by creating shallow cone-shaped banana leaf plate secured with lidi semat (small thorn-like nail made from the coconut leaf mid rib). The pincuk fit the left palm while the right hand used to consume the food. It is functioned as a traditional disposable take-away food container. The cleaned banana leaf is often used as a plate mat; cut banana leaf sheets placed upon rattan, bamboo or clay plates are used to serve food upon it. Decorated and folded banana leaves upon woven bamboo plate are used as the tray to serve tumpeng rice cone and jajan pasar or kue delicacies.


SOURCE
WIKIPEDIA