Kele Podi (Ripe Banana Fritters)

I love Thai food. When I first arrived in the USA, some of my cousins introduced me to the red and green Thai curries and since then I am hooked on to those. But I have not tried many of the Thai delicacies yet. Actually the Thai cuisine is very much close to the Konkani cuisine. We use bamboo shoots, jack fruits, bananas in the curries based with coconut sauce.
Only thing missing in ours is the flavorful basil.

Last week I had dinner at a Thai Restaurant with some of my friend. We had Deep fried bananas for the dessert. That reminded me of my very own Kele Podi. Kele in Konkani is banana and Podi is fritters.

Banana fritters or Deep fried bananas is made with a special type of bananas called nendra baaLe in Kannada and Konkani, known as Macho bananas in the Mexican produce shops in USA. They are bigger and more fatter than the usual bananas and have a triangular cross section.


Nendrabaale or Maacho Banana

To make banana fritters you need
1/4 cup rice flour
2 ripe macho bananas
pinch of salt
oil to deep fry

1 tsp sesame seeds and honey for garnishing, optional

Peel the bananas and cut into 3 inches long and 1/2 cm thick. Sprinkle pinch of salt, shake the bowl so that it spreads evenly. Let it rest of 5 minutes.
In the meanwhile, heat oil. Roll the bananas one at a time in the rice flou. Shake it to remove the excess. Fry the bananas in oil under medium low flame till light brown on both the sides.

Adorn it with tossed sesame seeds and drizzle of honey on top, just like they do in the fancy restaurants.

Updated Jan 18
I recently happened to read about the A Fruit A Month blog event on Publish Today. This month event is on banana. What a co-incidence! I will be posting this recipe for the event.