Explore the versatile and nutritious banana peel and a recipe for meatless meatballs while enjoying stories about banana spirits and an banana-obsessed teacher.   

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This recipe for Meatless Meatballs made from Banana Peels is by Otherworldly Junko in Milano, Italy.  She does a wonderful job describing the recipe with pictures taken during the process! 

https://cookpad.com/us/recipes/13838118-meatless-meatballs-made-from-banana-peels

Ingredients for 2 people

Meatless 'Meat' Mixture

·         150 g or 2/3 of a cup of Banana peels.  She used the peels of 3 yellow bananas though she notes that greenish bananas are better for ‘meatballs’ as the riper the banana gets, the thinner and sweeter the peel becomes. 

·         90 g or about 6 oz onions Onion

·         30 g or about 4 oz Carrot

·         1 clove Garlic

·         1 tsp Oregano

·         1/3 tsp Nutmeg

·         1/4 cup All-purpose flour

·         30 g or ½ cup Bread crumbs

·         1 Egg

Tomato Sauce (I recommend doubling or tripling this or using your favorite spaghetti sauce)

·         1 tbsp Olive oil

·         250 g or about 9 oz Tomato purée

·         2 tbsp Red wine

·         1 tsp Sugar 

·         1 tbsp Soy sauce

Other

·         Salt

·         Pepper

·         Parsley

·         Parmesan cheese

Steps

Carefully wash the banana peels under running water, and wipe off the water. 

Chop the banana peels, onion, and carrot, and put them into a mixing bowl. Add the oregano, nutmeg, flour, bread crumbs, egg (if you are vegan, use a flax egg instead), and some salt and pepper. Mix them all -- using hands makes your life a lot easier.

Note: I recommend that you chop the vegetables and banana peel very fine! 

Cover the mixture and let stand in the fridge for 30-45 minutes. If you skip this step, your meatballs will fall apart so don't forget to rest the mixture.

Take out the mixture from the fridge, and form it into meatballs. The author got 12 meatballs from the mixture when she made it.

Put the olive oil and sliced garlic in a pan, and turn on the heat. Sauté the garlic until fragrant. Then add the tomato purée, red wine, sugar, soy sauce (it's a secret ingredient...), and salt and pepper, and stir the sauce on medium heat until it starts to simmer.

Gently add the banana peel meatballs to the sauce. Make sure the meatballs won't stick together.

Simmer on medium-low heat for about 10 minutes, with the lid on. Turn the meatballs halfway through.

Season to taste and garnish with parsley and parmesan. Serve hot!

Other references:
https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-banana-peel#1
https://otherworldlyoracle.com/magical-properties-of-fruits/
https://www.myrecipes.com/extracrispy/haunted-banana-prank
https://wolfberrystudio.blogspot.com/2015/10/banana-tree-spirits-in-chines

Introduction sequence

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