I was so excited to see saba bananas the other day at this Filipino grocery store I recently discovered in the city.  The first thing that came to mind: I can fry them and make banana-cues!

Banana-cues are deep-fried bananas with caramelized sugar on a stick.  It’s one of my favorite after-school snacks growing up.  Instead of frying them after slicing or mashing like they do in Latin America, Filipinos deep-fry their saba or Philippine plantains whole and then stab a bamboo stick through them to make them a little more handy.

I actually have never made banana-cues before since my mom, of course, made them for us and they’re ubiquitous back home.  It’s really simple to do: heat a wokful of oil, roll the bananas in brown sugar and deep-fry them. It’s easier said than done, I guess.  After burning a couple bananas in my first try, I managed to get the sugar nicely caramelized with the rest of the batch.