Glossary

Bananas

Bananas are a a worldwide contender for the most popular fruit, bananas are used green in curries, cooked with sugar to fill lattice-topped sweet tarts and fried to perfection to make beignets. Among the misty mountains of Innisfail in Far North Queensland lives a small and close-knit community - a group of Hmong people, refugees from Laos who settled in Australia after the Vietnam War. While many Hmong originally settled in Sydney and Melbourne, they were lured north by tropical Queensland's climate and landscape... and the fact that they could grow many of the fruit and vegetables they are used to from home. Among those are bananas... but not just the ordinary Cavendish variety we're most used to seeing in the shops. In fact, 90 percent of all bananas grown in Australia come from the Innisfail area. One of the most popular banana varieties grown by the Hmong is ducasse, a small, sweet, slightly tangy banana with soft pliable leaves and crunchy purple "bells" - the tightly-packed, heart-shaped part of the plant that covers the growing banana "hands". When the last hand has appeared, signalled by a cluster of wilting flowers, the bell is ready to pick and use in a whole heap of fabulous dishes. Sometimes known as the banana blossom or even banana flower, the bell is like a crunchy salad vegetable. It's shredded into acidulated water to remove any residual sap and dust, any remaining banana buds and to prevent discolouring. It can then be used in dishes like larb (see recipe below) or som tam - a version of the green papaya salad also enjoyed by the Lao and Thais. Former restaurateur Mai Chee has a number of recipes for every part of the banana, including a series of sticky rice sweets steamed in banana leaves. They come with coconut, banana slices, sweet corn and even a very sticky purple rice variety. Mai Chee also fries shredded banana bells with lemongrass and uses them to garnish a spiced coconut milk soup - similar to the Nonya dish, laksa (see recipe below). The Hmong are a rural people who have made their home in the mountains between Laos and Thailand, where they fled in the mid-nineteenth century from their original homeland in southern China. During the Vietnam War, many supported the American forces. Consequently they were forced to flee after the war, mostly to refugee camps in Thailand. Most of the Australian Hmong came via refugee camps - some spending up to 30 years there before being granted permission to migrate. During their time in the camps, many women sewed "story cloths" - a pictorial history of their people stitched in appliqued scenes onto a dark background. They are quite extraordinary works of handicraft and a beautiful depiction of an often tumultous history. We filmed at the farm of Vang Cheng near Mena Creek, with the assistance of Sao Lee - a local Hmong community representative and also a banana grower.