Food Lust People Love: pisang goreng

Just ripe bananas dipped in a thick batter are deep-fried till golden, creating a crispy outside and a soft sweet inside – a truly delectable treat called Pisang Goreng in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. In English that translates to fried bananas.

“Pull over!” she’d cry. It might be a fruit stand selling durian or a little roadside café or a hole-in-the-wall frying hot wontons filled with shrimp. No matter, my mother was (and is) always game to stop and try whatever is on offer. I get my food adventurousness from her. When we lived in Trinidad, we ate curried who-knows-what at shacks by the side of the road. (My favorite is goat.) The other expat ladies thought she was crazy and that we’d get sick. We never did. In Venezuela Mom would buy me homemade cheese, called queso de mano, from peddlers who would dart between cars at the big roundabout near our house. Even when we moved back to Houston, she would seek out the little local markets in the ethnic areas, driving clear across town to drink yogurt lassi and eat spicy samosas or to perhaps buy Middle Eastern sweet treats like baklava to bring in to work.

Through all the countries we’ve lived, I’ve tried to do the same. Street food, when cooked hot and fresh, is the very best. Get in line at the stall with the most people waiting to be served and you are guaranteed something tasty and worth waiting for. All those people can’t be wrong, right?

My mother-in-law, me and my mom, at a hawker center in Singapore, 1 June 2009.
This is where Mom chose to go for her birthday lunch!

This week our Sunday Supper group is celebrating global street food and I cannot tell you how long my list of possible recipes from myriad countries was. It took me three days to settle on just one. I don’t remember where I first tried fried bananas but I can tell you that my daughters fell in love with them in Brazil, where they are often served as the dessert at the end of a churrascaria meal. Fried bananas are also typical market or street food all over Asia. Turns out that the Portuguese are probably responsible for both. If Wikipedia is to be trusted, up until 1511, Malaysians ate bananas in their natural state. When the Portuguese arrived, they brought with them the flour necessary to make batter and their method of frying bananas, which then spread throughout the region. So hats off to the Portuguese and let’s fry some bananas!

Many thanks to the Google+ Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia Cuisine Community, led by the talented and kind +Azlin Bloor, who generously allow me to be part of their group and who helped me settle on a recipe for the batter. You all rock!

Ingredients
3/4 cup or 95g all-purpose flour
1/4 cup or 40g rice flour (not glutinous rice flour)
2 teaspoons baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 egg
1 -1 1/4 cups water, or just enough to make the batter thick enough to stick to the bananas
Oil for deep frying – I use canola
4-5 medium-sized ripe - but not too soft - bananas

Powdered sugar – optional but not traditional – for serving
(Some fancy restaurants in Asia also serve these now, sometimes with ice cream.)

Method
Combine your flours, baking powder and salt in a big mixing bowl.

Beat your egg with a little water to loosen it and pour it in the mixing bowl.

Keep stirring and adding water until your batter is thin enough to drip off the whisk but still thick enough to cling to a banana.

Heat oil in pan or wok over medium flame to about 365°F or 185°C. This is the temperature on my candy/deep frying thermometer which is suggested for doughnuts.

Peel and slice bananas in half widthwise then lengthwise.