FACES AND THEIR WORK: Making Banana Cue on Market Street
We are down the market street in Barangay Cugman, Zone 2 and watching how BANANA CUE & TURON are made
Bananas on skewers, known in the Philippines as ‘banana cue’ and without skewers, but wrapped in the dough of a spring roll and then called ‘turon’, are a very well-known ‘street food’.
You can buy them at both ends of our market street from early in the morning until late in the evening.
I was allowed to watch a woman at one of the shops for bananacue, what and how she does it.
The preparations in the evening are to wet unripe Saba bananas, which are the cooking bananas, with a chemical liquid, then they are ripe the next morning. Then the bananas are peeled and put into a wok heated with cooking oil, where they are deep-fried. Brown sugar is added to the hot oil. The hot oil makes the sugar liquid, it mixes and does not combine with the oil, but starts to stick to the bananas.
In this way, both types of preparation mentioned above get their sweet karemalised ingredient. One goes on the skewer, the other on the tray.
The Banana Cue woman does not have to wait long for customers. Even if her trays seem to be full. That can change very quickly and she knows from experience when to start frying again, because you don’t want to keep your customers waiting.
The banana skewers are a welcome snack to stroll around the market with while eating them.
The whole action is also available as a video on my Youtube video channel PHILIPPINE MAGAZINE