Let’s Go Bananas 🍌
Alternatively: Snatch + flour + nostalgia = yum banana goodness
Another week has gone by at Zoom University, but because students are getting more used to it while work ramps up, it still feels pretty tumultuous. As with all things quarantine-related, everyone’s motivations are at varying levels and honestly, that’s okay! This pandemic and quarantine are literally unprecedented: there’s no playbook, no guidelines, or even general recommendations for something like this. The closest thing we have to specialized advice is from astronauts: that should indicated how the events of 2020 have been out-of-this-world!
Last night, however, I was able to have a wonderful time with my friends over a video call 😊 We caught up, chatted about our highs and lows, but most importantly ignited the inspiration for this post: Snatch! Snatch is a tile-based word game that’s been around for ages (some sources claim since the Victorian era), and is somewhat similar to Bananagrams. One of my friends on the call brought up the game as something to do, as she’d been playing a recently deployed online version (developed by another MIT student!). We played a couple of rounds of Snatch and successfully got everyone riled up - would highly recommend for anybody looking for a way to have fun with friends during this quarantine!
You may be wondering how that inspired the dishes today, and it’s way simpler than Snatch: bananas! The relation to Bananagrams combined with the fact I had excess flour from a previous recipe immediately brought the idea of banana-based desserts to mind. Of course there was your classic banana bread, pudding, milkshakes and what not, but I wanted to try a lovely dessert I’d enjoyed last summer in Singapore: kuih kodok! Thank you to Roti n’ Rice for the recipe!
Kuih kodok, sometimes called “Toad fritters” in English or “pisang goreng” in other Southeast Asian countries, is a banana dessert believed to be Malaysian in origin. The recipe is incredibly simple: all you need to do is mash bananas together with all-purpose flour, an egg, (optional) baking powder, and then fry! From removing the banana feels to eating the kuih kodok, it only took 10 minutes to whip up this delicacy. I’d had this dessert a few times during my summer in Singapore, but it’s important to note that most of the vendors in Southeast Asia tend to use more baking powder to get a more dough-based and crunchy exterior, whereas I did not use any. I personally prefer not using baking powder because I like the just-barely-crispy texture of the exterior, and it also does not fry the dessert too much (I’m trying to limit fried foods, but this was just too good!).
Another banana-based dessert I whipped up was Pan-Fried Honey Bananas - thank you to Joanne from Fifteen Spatulas for the recipe! These were absolutely delicious (pictures below), and there are very few added sugars outside the raw ingredients. Unlike kuih kodok, there is no mashing of bananas here: instead, cinnamon and honey are brought together with butter to form a liquid for the bananas to temporarily fry in. This was my first time caramelizing anything, so I was very cautious about preventing overcooking. Luckily, it was not too difficult to soak the bananas and fry for about a minute or two on each side to infuse them with the cinnamon honey flavor. It was also so easy to make, and the recipe I followed was incredibly clear. I paired the dessert with some Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream that we’d stocked up on during our bi-weekly grocery trips, and I think it’s safe to say we’ll have to buy some more!
My third and final banana-themed item is a bit more boring and perhaps not as sweet, and that would be my daily post-workout smoothie (recipe by yours truly). Over the past few months I’ve been trying to regain my physical fitness and maintain if not gain muscle mass, especially in the face of COVID-19. With my family being vegetarian it can be hard to find good sources of protein, so I turn to shakes to make up the deficit on hard workout days (like today!). Like kuih kodok and pan-fried honey bananas, the recipe is very simple: bananas, milk, protein powder, and blueberries all come together in a smoothie to form a protein-packed semi-viscous liquid. Sometimes I’ll add peanut butter or flax powder to enhance the flavor a bit more - because it’s a smoothie, there’s a lot of variation possible!
That’s it for now for the banana-themed items! I thought it would be interesting to try a themed set of recipes as opposed to a single one, and I also thought the inspiration story was amusing and worth sharing :)
