These are a great dessert. It does require banana leaves though, so get on over to your local Hispanic grocery store and practice your Spanish. You may even be able to buy them online if you like. You also need a steamer.
The bananas you use for this are not the regular big telephone bananas that you get for lunch. Rather, these are small guys, like you’d get on an airplane, that are a bit less delicious if eaten raw but good cooked. Their flavor is deeper than a regular banana with more of a tropical, honey-like taste than the big blunt flavor of the (still delicious) kind you normally find in the US. If you cannot find these (again, look at the Hispanic store), you could try very unripe very large regular bananas, cut in half crosswise first. If you are feeling adventuresome, you could probably get the right taste using a very ripe plaintain.
Filling
250 grams of glutinous rice, soaked in water for two hours.
1/2 cup thick unsweetened coconut milk
2 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
6 cooking bananas, halved lengthwise
Wrapping
24 8cm by 8cm banana leaf squares, softened by dipping in boiling water for a second
string or toothpicks
Steam the rice over boiling water for 15 minutes. While rice is steaming, heat sugar, salt, and coconut milk over low heat until hot and blended. When rice is steamed, add it to the milk mix and stir until the rice soaks up all of the mixture. (The rice won’t be quite done yet; this is ok).
Arrange two banana leaf squares, shiny side toward you, on a plate. Place one-twelfth (like two tablespoons or so) of the rice in the middle, and squish a banana half into it. Rolle the banana leaves up like an eggroll or a burrito, and fix shut with either string or toothpicks. Repeat with the other 11 bananas.
Place the banana packets in a steamer and steam over boiling water for 35 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature, then serve. They look like this.
Tom Pepinsky 