Banana-mania

I enjoy the abundance of fresh produce. But this time, the abundance was a little overwhelming.

Last week, when we got home from work, we found a gigantic stem of bananas hanging from the eave by our front door. A generous blessing by some secret Elf of Tonga…  – Tree-ripened, beautiful local lady-finger bananas. We love the taste of these flavoursome island bananas which almost have a hint of a lemony taste.

But what do you do with 160+ bananas, after you have eaten a couple of dozen, given tons away to friends and work-colleagues, filled up our small freezer, and still have about eight kilograms left?

A quick check with Mr. Google confirms that bananas can be dehydrated in the oven at 80 degrees C. Cut into chips and sticks and drizzled with fresh lemon juice, they shrink to about a third of their original size. So, I spent an entire afternoon doing just that. Here is the result:

What surprised us was that the dried bananas retain their intense beautiful flavour during the process. Could this be a new export product for Tonga?

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Next time, it might be watermelon or pineapple… then what?