Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Pazham pori (banana fritters)


Writing blogs is easy but writing down the procedural steps of a recipe is not easy. But still I love these Ethakka Appam / Pazham Pori (banana fritters)
You can’t miss those big variety of Banana known as Ethakka in Kerala. (now a days you get them in all the “Kerala stores” across the country and what is available across the country is available all over the world)
I was told that daily about 10000 idlis were made in Ernakulam early in the morning at 5 am, packed and send by flight so that they can have hot idlis for breakfast in Dubai.

Making Pazham Pori (Ethakka appam) is very easy.
Select the ripest ones.
Cut each banana into 3 or 4 pieces, lengthwise.
Make a thick batter with one cup refined flour and half cup rice powder (with half cup water). Add half cup sugar and teeny weenie bit of bicarbonate of soda.
Pazham pori in the making
Dip the banana slices in the batter and deep fry in hot oil till golden brown.
Drain off the excess oil and serve hot.
the finished product
Simple isn’t it.
Now to make it a little more tasty, replace water with coconut milk.
Powder some elaka (cardamom/elaichi) and add to the batter. Yummmmmm.
(economy hint: the more ripe the banana, the less sugar you have to add)
Talking about banana reminded me of how I polished off 7 bananas at a stretch. This was in response to a challenge thrown in by my dad. I was well known at home for consuming bananas. One day my dad was back from marketing and as soon as he kept the bananas in the basket two disappeared. When he discovered that, he took the whole bunch (one doz) and kept it in front of me. “OK son let me see how much you can eat” I took up the challenge and started off one by one. I could eat 5 more making the total tally at 7. That should have created an aversion for bananas, but in my case it did not.
Below is a photograph from the net (plantain packing around 1900 in Circa)

25 comments:

CAntony said...

Oh!!! I'm going to try making this for the potluck I'm having in a few weeks! =)

Gauri Gharpure said...

guess where i had this delicious dish? somewhere in malaysia near a lesser-known picnic point..

my friend got these bananas in school for lunch, one wud be enough for her.. and yes, we stayed in ahmedabad, but this and different types of plantain chips were easily available in kerala stores

Casuarina said...

Hey, thanks for the recipe. I mean to try it out very soon ( and hopefully, impress the in-laws ;D ).

They fly idlis to Dubai...now, that's news to me :-)

I love bananas too, and am glad that Bengalees eat it in all forms : cooked raw (both as part of an invalid's diet and coated in batter and deep-fried to make 'kofta'), as a fruit (with 3 popular variants : 'mortoman', 'knathali' & 'Singapori'), as a vegetable (the plantain, cooked as a dry curry with coconut and cumin) and the tender stem (also as a dry curry). I think that's enough evidence that they love it, whassay ? ;-)

Sanjeev Kulkarni said...

You know something, I love this... and my mom often prepares it for me... But long time i haven tried one, now your article have reminded me of this, i shall ask my mom to make it for me:) :)

VENNILLA said...

Hi friend this is vennilla here.. ur doing a really good job.. can we exchange links..

Christine said...

Sounds delicious! Thanks for sharing the receipe!

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm... seems scrumptious. Being a punjabi limits my choices to raajma chaawal and stuff like that. I wish you could fly this dish to my home (inspired by idlis being flown to dubai...lol) Slurp!!!!

Insignia said...

Soo simple yet it looks so yummy!!
Gonna try out. Thanks for the recipe and the tips :-)

Gomathy S said...

I love this snack :)

Vrinda said...

Thanx for visiting my blog..pazham pori looks delicious and my all time fav snack..adding rice powder is new to me,will try next time...

Judith Ellis said...

YUMMY! Love the photo of the plantain packing plant.

Haddock said...

Yes Judith, love to see old pics like these.
You get to see a glimpse of things were 50 or 100 years ago.
You are the first to comment on this picture.

The Holy Lama said...

All time favourite snack of malayalis. These banana fritters look delicious.

Destiny's child... said...

Your post reminded me that I had asked my mother to make pazham pori for me a few days ago...time to set another reminder...
Your fritters look yum-scrum!

3 hungry tummies said...

looks so delicious, i want some now!

Lyn said...

Those bananas look so delicious! I may try your recipe out this holiday season ... I think they would be really good with some maple syrup drizzled on them!

VENNILLA said...

Thanks..

G said...

So what you're telling me is this is healthy....

Cloudia said...

still good!

kamalika said...

wow...waiting to try this out... we Bengalies have a version of this dish too...

grace said...

i generally eat a banana every day, but sadly, it's never prepared like this. if it were, i'd probably be downing four or five a day. :)

CAntony said...

I was going through pictures last night and came across a picture of the infamous pazham pori from the shop around the corner from O'Geeunca's house.

I'm going to try making these this weekend. I'll send pictures if I do.

ahyat said...

Interesting story joe thanks for sharing! you know what, we share similarity here, we have it too in malaysia and is famous among the malays community largely but loved my all races and levels of society. We call it 'pisang goreng', direct meaning of fried banana.

P.s thanks for your comment on my freetravellers.blogspot.com for the portrait post :) take care joe!

Prerna said...

I love, aboslutely love, ethakka appam! brings back good ol' memories spent at granny's place! Thanks to this entry i am inspired to try my hand at it!
Also the banana challenge had me in splits! My husband succeeded at pulling of a similar feat when i was 7 or8, in his case it was to ward off boredom and spite his mom fr punishing him and confining him in the cellar!

viagra online said...

Those fried bananas are delicious, I love them with some rice and beans, a big juicy steak, some salad, some mash potatoes and a glass of coke with three ice cubes.