CREDIT CRUNCH MUNCH

Credit Crunch Munch- The Green Banana Curry

5 green (under-ripe) bananas

2-3 tbsp vegetable oil

1 onion, finely sliced

1 tbsp curry paste

400ml coconut milk

Serves 4

It seems like most people in these times of recession are constantly looking for meals to cook for under a fiver. Jamie Oliver has been doing his best on TV to promote cooking pasta as one of these cheap meals, but Jamie "people have been doing this for years, for under a pound!"

Wouldn’t it be nice to cook something exotic for once that doesn't break the weekly food budget? The green banana curry is the ultimate taste of African cuisine and the best bit is: it's easy to cook.

After a recent trip to Zanzibar, which is a mostly Muslim populated island in East Africa, I was amazed at the dishes they cooked up at their sunset-feast during Ramadan. The tastiest of all these dishes had to be the green banana curry, which was always accompanied with a spicy porridge drink.

The curry seems to be a very simple recipe consisting of only five ingredients: curry paste; under-ripe bananas, onions and coconut milk. All ingredients came to under £3 at Tesco's; this is potentially a credit-crunch student fantasy.

Firstly I peeled and chopped the green bananas about 3 centimetres thick, then threw them into a deep pan of the heated vegetable oil. It's now when you realise why it has to be hard green bananas rather than yellow soft ones as they tend to stick to the bottom of the pan. Treat it like a stir-fry and keep them moving in the pan until they've browned slightly.

Take the bananas out of the pan and put them on kitchen paper, two fold, to let them dry a bit as they seem to act like little sponges in a sea of oil. This is the time to add the onion to the remaining banana-flavoured oil and stir until soft.

The bottom of the pan shouldn't be too oily now and the onions should be silky. Add the slightly drier bananas to the mixture along with a tablespoon of the curry paste and mix them all together until it smells like your favourite balti-house.

Pour over half of the coconut milk and stir on a low heat for ten minutes. Notice the mixture transcending from white to orange like a British girl at a fake-tanning salon.

The curry should now be bubbling like lava, so pour over the rest of the coconut milk to cool it down. Leave the concoction for a few minutes and serve when the bananas start to mush and breakdown a little. Garnish with coriander and accompany with rice. Bon-appetite or "ufurahie chakula chako" as they say in Swahili.

Green banana is a perfect ingredient for a curry, tasting like a mix between potato and parsnip. Do not be fooled in thinking that this curry is going to be too sweet on the palette as the under-ripe banana provides perfect balance with the spices in the curry paste, no matter how hot you want to make it.

This tasty, cultural, bittersweet, spicy, simple, cheap recipe will impress your friends and is definitely something tropical and different that will engulf your home in the aromas of an East African beach at sunset in Ramadan. Enjoy!

BY LIAM DAY