Pan Plantains

by Shardul, 12 Jun 2020

Quick Recipe — Authentic Fried Plantain Dessert

Good morning to all, myself Shardul, today I am going to tell you how to make the fried plantain dessert. I call it as ‘Pan Plantains’ (in my mother tongue Marathi it is called kelyacha halwa केळ्याचा हलवा). This is authentic recipe from my hometown and it is great dessert item and healthy also. For those who are unfamiliar plantain is a vegetable like banana but it is not eaten just like that, but you have to cook it. It is not banana.

Ingredients

This much ingredients will be four people.

• 5 ripe plantains. When they are ripe the skin is becoming black. See the photo to the right. In India they are sometimes called Kerala bananas.
• ghee or clarified butter
• 1 handful of unroasted cashews
• 10 table spoons of sugar, but may be more or less depending on your taste and the plantain’s taste

Procedure

First to prepare the cashews. In the first picture it is cashews with the skin so we have to peel it. It is shown in the second picture. If your cashews don’t have their skin then you don’t have to peel it.

Then we break the cashews into pieces. Break by hand so that the pieces are not too small, gives crunchy feeling when eating. But for crunchy feeling we need to fry the cashew pieces in hot ghee. The frying is shown in the first picture and then the result.

Now for the time being the cashews we will put to the side. Now we will look at the plantains. After peeling, cut them vertically and then again vertically at 90 degrees. I mean to make two perpendicular cuts in the plantain in lengthwise direction. And then if you cut slices as normal, it will be cut into four parts. I think it will be more clearer in the pictures.

All the cut plantains!

In a big frying pan or pot or wok, heat a good amount of ghee. Sometimes I think that it is not the healthy food but actually ghee is best fat compared to normal butter. So heat nice four, five spoons of ghee. Add the plantain pieces and keep stirring it. Slowly the plantains will become smashed and get frying’s color.

When they start becoming smashed and hot we should add the sugar. Add one spoon, then mix it, then add one more spoon, then mix it, and in this way we will add the entire sugar. As you add it you will see that the sugar is becoming brown. That is because of heat. Don’t make it too much brown but turn off the gas when it is like the picture below.

It is done! Just add the cashews from before and serve it when it is hot.

Variations

It does not have to be dessert also. We can eat with chapatis. But if you want to give different touch you try with vanilla ice cream. I have not tried. Some people put almonds instead of cashews or put both. And you can also add the spice with cardamom (elaichi), cinnamon (dalchini), etc. but I think it is best as a simple wholesome dish.