Turon (banana egg roll)

So I tried another Filipino dish.  This time I tired turon, which is a banana sprinkled with brown sugar and rolled up in a won ton (spring roll, egg roll, lumpia...still have to learn the difference between all of those) wrapper and deep fried.  It tasted pretty good, but the process of getting there was a bit bumpy.  My friend Melissa in Spain said that they have turon in Spain, which makes sense since the Philippines were a colony of Spain for several hundred years.  Although Allan and I were wondering if they use some other dough to roll it in instead of a won ton wrapper.

Here are all of the ingredients laid out and ready to go.

My first bump was using a turkey thermometer to test the oil instead of a candy thermometer.  Oops!  Melted a little! 

Then, my second bump was having my little Trevor almost blow away in a tent.  You see Jakob was out back playing while I was preparing, so I put Trevor in a little tent on the grass.  Not too long passed when Jakob came in whinning and crying.  I went outside to find the tent upside down!  I rescued Trevor and brought both boys inside.  ha ha... Trevor wasn't even crying and had no clue.

I was sorta using two different recipes.  A Filipino one to make sure it was authentic, but then an American one so I could follow more specific step by step directions.  Maybe my oil was too hot... couldn't tell since I melted my thermometer.  But one recipe said to sprinkle brown sugar on the turon while it was deep frying.  My sugar just floated around and clumped up... it didn't stick to the turon or caramelize at all.  Oh well.

 

Then the nice American recipe said to let the turon dry on paper towels to soak up the oil.  But my turons were gobbed with brown sugar so they stuck to the paper towel.  I got rid of the paper towel for the next two batches and just went with the extra oil.  :)

And the finished product didn't look too bad!  I didn't want to waste the globs of caramelized brown sugar floating in the oil, so I put it on the turon.  Didn't quite make it look like the picture, but it was yummy.  I think it will probably get better with practice.  My husband enjoyed them very much and said they tasted just like they should!  He ate two or three in a matter of minutes.  Got me a little anxious how quickly he just popped them into his mouth and they disappeared... didn't he know the bumpy road I traveled to produce them?