Well, some people don’t do it but I do!
In my post yesterday, I said that I was sure I had blogged about preparing paku (another nice wild jungle fern)…
…for cooking but I have not been able to locate that post. Never mind! Let me show you all over again how to go about it.
Firstly, you have to cut away the bottom half of the stems. That part is very hard and not edible. You bend the stem midway up till you come to the part that is soft and bends easily – that is where you have to cut…
Incidentally, you can keep the leaves in the lower halves that you are going to throw away – those may be eaten, provided they are not too old.
It seems that some people don’t bother to do this but you should slice the stem into halves…
…and if it is very big, it would be good to cut it into quarters…
People seem to enjoy eating sweet potato leaves these days. I used to plant my own and I would only pluck the young leaves to cook and eat. However, I saw at one restaurant where they did not have a choice so what they did was to cut the stems of those leaves into two this same away and everyone liked it a lot more that way. I guess it is the same with paku.
This paku is not as popular as the midin, probably because at most places, they do not bother to do all this and they just cook it like that, plus there are only a few places around town that do it really well – most are not all that nice. I am not all that fond of cutting the ferns into very short lengths, around an inch, either.
Of course, this is more tedious to prepare…
…compared to the midin but it can be cooked in so many ways, all nice and one way would be to do what my missus did that day – use it to prepare this Thai-style salad or kerabu…
It is so nice that I am quite sure you will go for a second bowl of rice!
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 
The kerabu looks good. Come to think of it, I think I have it once at this Hoi Tin Lau Restaurant and it is served cold. Guess the paku needs to blanch first, rite?. What is use as the toppings?
Yes, gotta blanch the paku first. Quite a lot of places serving this here. Can follow the recipe for my papaya salad that day…
https://suituapui.wordpress.com/2020/05/12/when-it-was-good/
Ouh can use it to prepare kerabu? I am not sure if the restaurants here, they have prepared such dish using paku or not.
I’m sure they have. I’ve seen photos online before, can’t remember where.
I love the paku kerabu that are sold at Malay mixed rice stalls.
This should be pretty much the same. We have some good ones here too.
More work but the outcome looks so good!! Salivating over your dish here!
Spliting the stems sure makes it nicer. You can try it if you cook sweet potato leaves especially when they are not that young.
We use that a lot in Philippines but cant find paku here in NZ, same with the sweet potato leaves, I grew up with that since we have a sweet potato plants at our backyard, since then I am craving for this two
Sad, isn’t it? So many ferns in NZ, the logo for so many things, even the All Blacks, but they’re all not edible.
I love jungle fern but I have never cooked it myself.
100% organic, grows in the wild!
Seldom hv the chance to eat these wild jungle fern.
The price of development.