Pinasugbo
Banana cut in long strips, fried, then glazed in muscovado caramel with sesame.
Vegan.
Ingredients
- 10 saba bananas, peeled
- 250 g dark muscovado sugar
- 100 ml water
- 3 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted
- 0.25 teaspoon salt
- oil, for deep frying
Method
- LONG STRIPS, NOT THIN COINS. Each banana is quartered lengthways into strips the full length of the fruit. The banana chip on this site is cut 2 mm across and fries to a crisp; these stay chewy in the middle with a crisp outside, and the caramel has something to cling along.
- Use firm saba. Soft ones break into pieces in the oil.
- Oil to 170C. Fry the strips in batches, 4 to 5 minutes, until gold and firm at the edges but still giving in the middle. Drain them on a rack.
- Let them cool at least 10 minutes. Hot strips put into caramel steam and the glaze will not set.
- Caramel: muscovado, water and salt in a wide pan, boiled without stirring 10 to 12 minutes, to 115C, or until a drop in cold water forms a soft thread.
- Strips in a few at a time, turned with two forks until coated. Work fast and in small batches -- the caramel stiffens as it cools and as the bananas chill it.
- Lift each one out and lay it on baking paper, well apart. Sesame seeds over them at once, while the glaze is still tacky.
- Leave them 20 minutes to set hard. They should be glossy and brittle on the outside.
- If the caramel in the pan stiffens before you are done, put it back over a low heat with a tablespoon of water for a minute.
Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.
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