A couple of Tuesdays ago, we had a couple of almost over-ripe bananas sitting on the dining table (we had meant to make banana pancakes over the weekend but got too busy). As I looked at the bananas and wondered what to do with them (I don't like eating them when they are too ripe), I had a sudden craving for pisang goreng. This could have had something to do with the fact that Bruce and I had lunch at Penang, my favourite (Malaysian) restaurant in Atlanta on Saturday to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary and food from home was still on my mind. Therefore, after work, I looked online for recipes for pisang goreng. I have Amy Beh's cookbook, but the Chinese version of pisang goreng is a little too crunchy for my liking, so I looked for something without rice flour amongst the ingredients. I found a recipe for the batter that sounded good and tried it that afternoon - it was scrumptious! Very easy to make, as well, so I will probably be making that again in the future. Not too often, because it's so greasy, but it is a nice treat to have every once in a while. The recipe is at the end of this post, in case anyone gets a craving ...
Now that we're finally ready to sell this house and look for a bigger one so that we have room for guests (and Bruce's father, if he decides to live with us), I've started working more enthusiastically on the outside of the house. About a month ago, we bought a bunch of stone blocks to build a short wall around the little island of plants and flowers in our front yard. This replaced the plastic border Bruce had put up years ago that was falling apart. There is now a two-layer wall around the island and it looks so much better. The weeds and I are in constant battle to see who will give up control of the island first. They (and the wild grass) won last year but this year I'm showing them who's boss. They are sprouting back almost as fast as I can pull them out, and the heat makes it difficult for me to stay outside for too long, but I'm trying to weed at least a small section each day. At least now we have what is termed "curb appeal", i.e. the house looks nice when you look at it from the curb/road.
However, the other day I realized that the vinyl siding, which was replaced less than two years ago, is beginning to look dirty and even had mould growing on it in the back, where the sun doesn't hit the house. Therefore, I am now having to literally wash the house. We found a mould & mildew remover at the store that works really well with just a few sprays and some scrubbing with a brush, so I did one section of the house a couple of hours ago. It is amazing what a difference the cleaning makes! That one wall now looks new again. I'm going to do a section at a time so that I don't tire myself out, but once the entire outside has been scrubbed, any new dirt should be easy to rinse off with the hose. (Which is apparently what I should have been doing all along, but since our house in Bangsar doesn't have to be washed on the outside, it didn't occur to me to do that here. I thought the rain would take care of the rinsing/cleaning, but all it does is splash on the ground and send dirt/mud up to the walls.)
We had a couple of short trips recently - one in April and the other in May. I'll write about that next.
http://www.kimbaskitchen.com/2010/05/banana-fritters-recipe-pisang-goreng.html
Ingredients:
1/2 cup self raising flour
1/4 cup corn flour
1 tsp baking powder
A pinch of salt
1 tsp sugar
180ml (cold) water (or until the batter reaches the right consistency)
1 tbsp oil for the batter mix
4 ripe / browning bananas
Enough oil for deep frying (I used peanut oil because that's all I had in the house at the time)
Method:
In a bowl, combine the flours, baking powder, salt and sugar. Add water slowly and mix to form a batter. Add the tablespoon of oil for smoothness.
Slice the bananas diagonally so it forms longish approx. 1.5cm thick strips.
Heat oil until it gets very hot. Dip and coat each banana strip with the batter. Deep fry until it turns brown.
No comments:
Post a Comment