The banana cakes with a dark yellow, so sweet and soft, arouse such a strong desire.
During my childhood, enjoying a pressed banana cake made by my mother was one of the sweetest memories that my siblings and I could never forget.
In my hometown, almost every house has a garden of banana with various kinds such as: king banana, large banana, aromatic banana…. People used to plant them near the edge of the ponds or streams.
The banana trees have a strong vitality, rise up just like the pillar, with their big and green leaves, and create a big cool shade for the entire garden. When bananas ripen, our home would be filled with their pervasive fragrance. The yellow and chubby bananas look so pretty and tasty.
Behind the fresh yellow cover, the part inside also has a yellow color. Having a bite of banana, and you would feel the sweet taste of it, very defined, so fragrant and delicious.
Banana is a kind of fruit that you can find in any seasons, which contains many vitamins that are good for your health.
From banana, you can make various dishes. Some dishes that my mother used to make are dry banana, banana jam, drying banana with flour…However, I like pressed banana most.
The equipments used to make pressed banana are very simple. Besides the hearth for cooking that we use to dry banana, we only need a flat wide-meshed basket and two thin boards.
My mother picked an old bunch of bananas, since the older will be sweeter. Then, she covered it tightly so that the bananas would be ripe, and even a slight touch could make them fall. After that, my mother only had to remove their cover and put them on the board, dried them for one shinny day.
Next, the bananas would be rolled so that they could release more sweet. The process was continued like that until the bananas become thinner little by little.
When the bananas were thin enough, my mother would prepare the sesame. She dried it until it turned into yellow. Then, she removed its shell and rolled the slice of banana on it.
After that, the slice of banana would have some white sesame on its surface, and looked very tasty.
The next step is drying. It is simple to dry the pressed banana, but we have to notice the fire. We have to keep the fire steady, not too high, not too small. A harmonized heat would help to make bananas have an eye-catching yellow, neither burn nor hard.
These days, in my hometown, the central part of the country, the sun is burning hot. This is the time of harvesting banana. As usual, my mother should have chosen the best bananas to make the pressed bananas for us. Maybe, with other people, the pressed banana is just a simple and common snack, but to me, it is really a beautiful memory of my sweet childhood.
