Pengat Pisang | Banana Sago sweet

In Malay, Pengat Pisang simply means “ Banana in  coconut milk”. This particular dish is cooked in different styles in different parts of Malay. Few use white sugar, while few others use palm sugar. Few add sago to bring in the texture. Pandan leaves are added to bring in the authentic flavour. Like in most of the recipes that I would come up next, a pinch of salt is used here as well, just to get the right balance of the taste. I believe that the food gets the sharpness of the taste that you would desire, only with the right amount of salt. In short, it plays the balancing act in all food that you prepare.

Few of the Malay communities prepare this during their celebrations like welcoming the new year, feasts, etc.  This is a quite popular Malay sweet dish made out of easily available ingredients.

Any kind of banana can be used here, the sweeter, the better. Banana is cooked for a very less time, as the more you cook, the mushier it gets. But it is equally important to cook it for a couple of minutes to get the aroma. So, You may keep aside 1 banana, to be added at the end, so that few bananas stay as is without getting mushier. In this recipe of mine, I have used cardamom instead of the pandan leaves. The end result is an equally delicious dish… Yummy, how I wish I could even share its aroma in this blog…

Duration :

Total time : 35 minutes

Total preparation time : 15 minutes

Cooking time : 20 minutes

Servings : 4

Ingredients :

• Fresh ripe bananas : 3 (Large)
• Sago / Sabu dana: 1/2 cup
• Fresh coconut milk : 2 cups
• Cardamom (optional, to add flavour, an inclusion by me ) : 6 (powdered)
• Palm sugar (if it is not available, you may add jaggery) : 3/4^th cup

Method :

Here we go with a quick video of the entire procedure :

 

• Fry the sabudana in a pan in medium flame till it starts to spurt

• Boil sabudana in little water till it turns translucent (for about 10 minutes)

• Parallely, in a deep bottom pan, add the coconut milk and boil it with palm sugar in medium flame

• Add the sabudana and 2 cut bananas to it and boil in low heat for few minutes with occasional stirring

• Add a pinch of salt. It makes lot of difference to the taste. In short, sweet tastes sweeter with a pinch of salt

• At the end, add the cardamom powder and 1 cut banana

You may serve this hot or chilled.

 

Banana stories:

I have a very good Malay friend whom I met in Germany and during our stay there, we used to meet often, share dishes and recipes. She is a very sweet friend of mine who used to take care of the fact that I am a vegetarian and helped me with lot of information that made my stay in Germany a pleasant one. The base recipe of this one, was shared by her, to which, I did a little modification to bring in the fusion. And here you go with the Indo Malay fusion dessert. If you want to cook the Authentic Malay dish, you may replace the cardamom with 2 pandan leaves (which are easily available in any Asian grocery stores)