Deep Fried Banana (Gluay Khek or Gluay Tod)

Gluay Khek (Deep fried banana) is one of the Thai desserts, which is prepared by slicing bananas and then dipping them in flour and frying until golden brown. The ingredients are rice flour, scraped coconut, sesame seeds (need to be roasted before using to make them more fragrant), sugar and coconut milk, etc. Then deep fry it in a pan with hot oil.

Thai people like to have Gluay Khek (Deep fried banana) as a snack. Gluay Khek usually can be seen for sale on the footpath or vendor street in any community generally.

Ingredients

• A handful of half-ripe Musa Sapientum banana (Gluay Nam Wa), or approximately 10-12 fruits (these are the small Thai banana)
• 1 cup rice flour
• ¼ cup wheat flour
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 Tbsp roasted white sesame seeds (or more according to your preference)
• ½ cup scraped coconut (white part)
• ½ cup palm sugar
• ¼ cup lime water
• ½ cup concentrated coconut cream
• 3-5 pandanus amaryllifolius leaves (Bai Toie), wash thoroughly and cut in half
• 3 cups vegetable oil for frying

How to do…

1. Peel the Musa Sapientum banana and slice it lengthwise into thin pieces, each fruit should be cut into at least three or four pieces.
2. Mix rice flour, wheat flour, salt, baking powder, palm sugar, roasted white sesame seeds, scraped coconut, lime water, and concentrated coconut cream together in a large bowl. Stir until flour and palm sugar dissolve well and until all ingredients are mixed well.
3. Pour the vegetable oil into the frying pan and set it on high heat. Wait until the oil is hot. Put the cut pandanus amaryllifolius leaves to fry in the pan for the fragrance. Then scoop them out.
4. Dip the prepared banana from step one into the mixing flour. Take the pieces of banana that have the mixing flour covering the entire pieces to fry in the pan. Fry until cooked, golden and crisp (the cooked bananas will be rise). Turn the bananas while frying too. Then scoop the cooked bananas out to drain the oil.
5. Put and organize the deep fried bananas on the plate. Serve them as a snack or an appetizer.

Tip : A delicious deep fried banana will usually use the Musa Sapientum banana (Gluay Nam Wa) that is not completely too green or too ripe to cook. And when frying them you must fry in the hot oil so when the bananas are cooked then they will turn golden brown and delicious. The taste of deep fried bananas that you get will be sweet, fatty and have a sweet smell. It will have the crispness from the flour that covered outside and inside will be soft with banana meat.
Note : The banana that is used to make more delicious deep fried banana than Musa Sapientum banana is Musa (ABB group) banana (Gluay Nang Ya or Gluay Nang Phaya) from the South of Thailand. If cannot find these then may be use the other types of bananas such as Musa (AA group) bananas (Gluay Kai), Musa (AAA group) bananas (Gluay Hom) or Musa Sapientum banana (Gluay Nam Wa) to cook instead. Or you can even use taro and sweet potatoes to cook instead of banana. But for taro and sweet potatoes, flour and fry them after peeling the skin off. They also need to be washed first. Then cut them into pieces about 0.5-1 cm thick.