Well, my friends, I have one more Filipino dish to share with you that didn’t make it into Filipino Food Month. It’s your bonus recipe– totally free! This is one of my very favorite things to eat. This is a dessert version of lumpia, and it is seriously tasty. I remember rushing to the student store at my school at lunch or merienda whenever these were fresh and buying them for 5 pesos (about $0.12) each.
In the Philippines, banana lumpia is made with a cooking banana, called saba. I have never seen saba here in Minnesota, so I struggled for a while to figure out what to make these with. Saba bananas are short and squat, and are starchier than regular bananas, but not as starchy as plantains.
I had tried making these with plantains before, and the plantains were too firm and stayed very separate from the rest of it. Then I tried regular bananas, but they just got mushy with the frying. I decided to try one more thing, and it worked quite well!