Jan 10: Fried Bananas

Having had leftover tacos (home-made of course!) for dinner, I still had energy left over to cook some desert tonight. I got a couple cookbooks at the Library's monthly book sale yesterday, and had been eying a recipe for fried bananas from the 1979 Sunset Mexican Cookbook. Another one of my sub-goals for broadening my culinary experiences is attempting more international dishes, being able to make meals with different ethnic flare. In Costa Rica they served a lot of fried bananas, and being something they just don't have in San Diego, even if I was sort of ho-hum about them at first (until I realized with ketchup on them they tasted like a french fry) .

Looked pretty simple too, requires one banana (green-tipped, not overly ripe) and 1.5 teaspons of butter.

Melt butter over medium-low heat in a saucepan ("wide frying pan").

Cut the banana lengthwise. I cut it in half as well since my saucepan was a little on the small side.

Add the banana (cut side down) in the saucepan (in the butter) and continue cooking on medium-low heat for 10 minutes (until lightly browned on the bottom). Oh my goodness a teaspoon and a half looks like a lot of butter melted!


Carefully turn the bananas over and cook for another 5-10 minutes (until lightly browned on both sides now).



Serve warm.



My rating? It really doesn't taste anything like the fried bananas in Costa Rica, a lot more juicy and buttery tasting. But none the less it made a fantastic (fairly) healthy desert, definitely worthy of repeating. And it really was every bit as simple as it appeared. It didn't require a lot of babysitting while it cooked or anything, I only checked it a couple times and set the timer. The only thing that was sort of hard was figuring out how to flip the bananas over. I ended up using a combination of a pancake spatula and a pair of tongs. It sort of worked, but was a little awkward. That part of the process could be improved perhaps with different tools.