Sonhos de Banana
Sonhos de banana means banana dreams in Portuguese, and they are small fried fritters from São Tomé and Príncipe, the island nation off the coast of Central Africa. Mashed banana is worked into a batter with flour, egg, milk and sugar, dropped into hot oil and dusted with cinnamon sugar while still warm. The Portuguese connection runs through everything about them. São Tomé and Príncipe was a Portuguese colony from the late fifteenth century until 1975, and sonhos are a Portuguese sweet in their own right, a fried dough eaten particularly at Christmas. What the islands did was put banana into them, which is what the archipelago grows, and the result is closer to a beignet than to a doughnut. The same sweet, under the same name, is eaten in Brazil, which shares the Portuguese colonial inheritance from the other side of the Atlantic. That triangle of Portugal, São Tomé and Brazil is visible in a great deal of the islands' food, and sonhos de banana is one of the clearest examples. They are eaten as a dessert or simply as something sweet in the afternoon, and they are at their best within minutes of leaving the pan.
São Tomé and Príncipe30 minNympha
