The Cooking Chronicles: Banana Fritters

Mack was insistent that we make spring rolls to bring to Megan's potluck on Friday. As it turns out, my Mum was kind enough to "lend" us her stash of ready-made rolls to simply fry up and go, so I thought it would be a good time to try out a recipe for Banana Fritters (as we could make use of the already-heated oil).

The genesis for my excitement was the similar dish I had at Pradera Cafe a few weeks ago - crispy, sweet, perfectly fried banana morsels that didn't seem too difficult to duplicate. The recipe was straightforward enough - the batter was easy to whip together, and once the bananas had been peeled and sliced, all that was left was to coat and fry them (my Mum taught us a neat little trick of how to test if the oil was hot enough: place a chopstick in the oil and watch for the volume of bubbles arising from the tip). We found that the smaller pieces were easier to coat, but were labor-intensive in terms of increasing the quantity we needed to fry. And we weren't sure if it was a result of a thin batter, but the fritters didn't end up being very crispy in the end. Though not the most appetizing-looking product (my Dad asked if what we gave him to eat was a Chicken McNugget, haha), once tossed in a cinnamon-sugar mixture and served with ice cream, it didn't seem to matter, and most people seemed to like them just as well.

So with the slight mishap of Mack burning himself with the hot oil (chalked up to a sacrifice for the culinary arts anyway), the experiment was a success.

Banana Fritters (not plated, boo)