February at My Kitchen…My World the destination of choice was Vietnam.  This is my first adventure with this group of international cuisine blogging ladies.  I was excited to find another group that specialized in international cuisine, however this little trip left me a little uneasy with the destination.  My dad is a Vietnam Vet, and he is involved with the Vietnam Veterans of America, so I often hear about the military and some about events from the war.

I did a good bit of research on the country and I am hoping that this will now make me think of Vietnam as this…

and not this…

So to get started I decided I really needed to find out a little bit about the country.  Here is their flag:

and their location on the globe…

Vietnam is a country of over 84 million people and 128,066 square miles.  This means the country is about the same size in square miles as Germany.  Vietnam has mountains, the Red River, and oceanic coastlines.  The Vietnamese cuisine uses very little oil and many vegetables. The main dishes are often based on rice, soy sauce, and fish sauce.  Its characteristic flavors are sweet (sugar), spicy serrano peppers, sour (lime), nuoc mam (fish sauce), and flavored by a variety of mint and basil.  All of this information came from Wikipedia, so check it out for more information.

After looking at a bunch of different Vietnamese recipes, there were not a lot of main dishes that I thought my family would eat, so I decided to look at deserts.  Here I found that there are not many Vietnamese deserts out there, but the country is very well known for there bananas.  Apparently, fried bananas are very common everywhere in Vietnam, so that was the recipe that I chose to try.

Here is the recipe which I adapted from Vietnamese Deserts Recipes:

Ingredients : Serves 6

6        small bananas

185 g (1 1/2 cups)    Flour

1 tablespoon  Sugar, plus additional for dusting

1 teaspoon     Baking powder

1/2 teaspoon  Salt

2        Eggs, lightly beaten

125 ml          Fresh milk

1 teaspoon     Melted Butter

250 ml          Oil

Method :

• Slice bananas lengthwise into half, or into thinner strips to form a fan. Sift together 1 cup of flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
• Blend in the eggs, milk and butter, then mix to form a smooth batter.
• Dip each banana slice into the batter and turn over several times to coat well.
• Heat the oil in a frying pan.
• Spread remaining 1/2 cup flour in a shallow dish. Dust the banana slices lightly with flour.
• Fry in hot oil until firm and fully cooked.
• Repeat with remaining batter. Drain on paper towels.
• Dust cooked fritters lightly with sugar before serving.

Now for my changes:  I added about 1/4 of the extra flour to the batter to thicken it up, and dropped the other 1/4 cup.  I cut the bananas up into chunks and put them all in the batter at one time.  I then dropped the banana mix by the spoonful into the hot grease.  I allowed the batter to cook up till nicely golden brown, then drained them on paper towels.  Just as I was serving, I sprinkled them with powdered sugar through a sifter.

The fritters were good, lightly sweet from only the banana and dusting of powdered sugar.  My dad really liked these, he even ate the leftovers!  I must admit though, I did not tell him it was a recipe from Vietnam, I was afraid it would bring back to many memories.  I look forward to next months trip.  It is nice to learn about other countries, even it it is with reluctant excitement.  Happy travels even if it is just in your kitchen!

The Lab – An Experiment to Taste!