September 21, 2013 in Bay of Islands, Vanua Balavu, Fiji
That’s right, those are not bananas. They are vundi, (or maybe budi, or maybe vudi, or maybe bundi – everyone gives us a different name!)
That’s right, they are much bigger than bananas. The green one is a banana and the yellow one is a vundi.
Other than that, they look pretty much like big bananas. But there’s a twist. When they’re green, they are virtually potatoes. When they’re yellow, they’re sweet, delicious bananas. We’ve found all kinds of things to do with them.
They make great hash browns. We use a potato peeler to remove the peel of the green ones – the peel is tenacious and won’t just peel off when green. We then use a cheese slicer to make thin slices and fry them up with butter, onions, and garlic and they come out like excellent hash browns.
They start out pretty white and turn yellow as they cook. Oh yea, we also add eggs.
When they are yellow and ripe, we either eat them just like bananas or put them on the grill. They caramelize a bit and have a crust that tastes a lot like marshmallows roasted over a campfire. The ripe ones are also great fried up with some butter, rum and brown sugar. Yum!
We’ve really enjoyed the vundi here – or whatever they’re called. I guess they might be a little like plantains. One of us might be just a tad bit obsessed with them (as I’m sure you can tell from this post) -Rich (the obsessed one)
