Chuoi nuong: grilled bananas in coconut sauce
A quick and yummy dessert.
Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Preparation time: 10 mins
Cooking time: 10 mins
Total time: 20 mins
Serves: 4
(aka chuối nướng: grilled bananas) OK, so I know fully well that this isn’t really how you do grilled bananas. Normally there should be sticky rice sprinkled with grated coconut that you wrap around the bananas before wrapping the lot in banana leaves and throwing it on the grill. However, grated coconut is rare in this house (and let’s not even mention banana leaves…). So let’s see about the stripped-down version, which only has three main ingredients and requires very little work to turn out awesome…
(the picture was taken with the leftover sauce; normally it should be more bananas draped in sauce, rather than a Frankenstein soup halfway to chè stage. Promise, next time I’ll try it with the sticky rice)
- 12 small bananas (or 6 large Cavendish ones)
- ½ cup coconut milk
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2 tablespoons water + 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- Handful roasted peanuts, crushed
- Put the coconut milk and salt in a saucepan, and bring to a boil. After it has started simmering, add the cornstarch diluted in the water, bring to a boil and wait for the sauce to thicken. Take off the heat, and wait till it cools. The sauce should be a teensy bit sweet; if it's not, add 1 or 2 lumps of sugar to taste.
- Cut the bananas in half along the horizontal axis. If using large ones, also cut them in half vertically.
- In a frying pan, put a fair amount of oil, and panfry the bananas until they turn soft and slightly browner (alternative version, just cut the Cavendish vertically, don't touch the small ones; wrap the bananas in foil and put them in an oven, broiling for a few minutes at 275°C).
- Remove and serve, putting the coconut sauce over the bananas and the crushed peanuts.
