"The Affected" is a new documentary that chronicles the lives of banana and sugar plantation workers in modern-day Latin America - and has uncovered a startling, ongoing nightmare: an epidemic of kidney failure among sugar workers, possibly related to pesticide exposure. The work the filmmakers have been doing has led to the killing of one crew member, and threats on the lives of others. You can read more about "The Affected" - and learn how you can help - here.
Snob.
The New York Times has been very kind to me, but one has to say that a banana split where:
has to be a bunch of hooey and snobbery. Get it together. Really.
Here's NYT's "banana split" for snobs.
Here's the real deal at BananasWeb.
Got this at a Philippine grocery a few blocks from my house in Los Angeles. Price: $1.59. The lady behind the counter called it "banana ketchup," and that's pretty much what it is, with the same basic ingredients - sugar, vinegar, salt, and spices - as the tomato stuff, but with bananas substituted for the red fruit base.
There are a bunch of varieties from Jufran. The product is listed at Ketchupworld.com, with both regular and hot versions; neither of these seem to be the one I found - the ingredients listed for both are different. The ketchup site gets $3.50 for a mail-ordered bottle. Searching around, it seems that the product has multiple incarnations, with different labeling - some designated as "sauce," others as "ketchup," and some using bright red food coloring to make them look more like the real thing. Mine is marked as "The Original," so I'll go with that.
How did ours taste? Fantastic: a little spicy, a little sweet - with the same consistency as tomato ketchup. I had mine on a big hunk of Turkey breast. Whupped the daylights out of cranberry sauce.
All hail the new King of Condiments.
Here's a link to a brief wikipedia entry on banana ketchup.
Homemade banana ice cream sammiches, Image from chubbyhubby.net
We don't have to sit by while the "Morning Banana Diet" marches across the planet, raising prices for the fruit and making emaciated zombies of us all. Here's a brand new recipe - from the Chubby Hubby Blog - for homemade banana ice cream, served between brownie cookies - that I hope will be the beginning of a massive counter-strike against the craze that begin a few months ago in Japan.
Banana tip: freeze them when they go brown. They keep for months, and you can use them to make all kinds of delicious stuff. Next in the arsenal: this banana pudding recipe - made with vanilla wafers - from the chitterlings.com soul food site (the recipe is almost at the bottom of the page.) We're going to make some this week. Report, with pictures, to come.
Thanks to my Dad for suggesting the recipe.
Matooke flour, courtesy Ugandan Presidential Initiative on Banana Industrial Development Programme
Steaming banana leaves for matooke. Full video sequence here.
There's a knock-down, drag-out contest going on right now in Kampala - held as a precursor to next month's World Banana Congress in Kenya - to see which chef makes the best Matooke, a Ugandan banana dish which I describe in my book as "the macaroni and cheese of the African highlands."
The contest began with over 100 chefs offering their recipes made with tooke, a flour made from East African Highland Plantains. Nine are now left standing, and they'll face off on October 5, serving their creations at a Presidential banquet to be held at the Kampala Serena Hotel.
Here's a description of the dish, which I refer to in my book, and which is more commonly referred to, as matooke. Interesting side note - I've mentioned it several times here, but Uganda is so dependent on bananas - many people get up to 90% of their daily calories from the fruit, eating up to 900 pounds of it a year, compared to about 25 pounds of it here in the United States - that in some small villages, the word for food, banana, and this signature dish are actually all the same. The description is from the Uganda Tourism website.
"One popular local dish is matooke (bananas of the plantain type) which are cooked boiled in a sauce of peanuts, fresh fish, meat or entrails. Matooke really goes with any relish, except that the best and most respectable way the Baganda cook it is to tie up the peeled fingers into a bundle of banana leaves which is then put in a cooking pan with just enough water to steam the leaves. When properly ready and tender, the bundle is removed and squeezed to get a smooth soft and golden yellow mash, served hot with all the banana leaves around to keep it hot. In Buganda, the food production process revolves around the banana tree. Tender banana tree shoots are removed from the plant and singed over fire to make a fine foil into which chunks of pork or beef are tied up and steamed on top of a bundle of bananas. This style of cooking preserves all the flavours and cooks up food like a pressure cooker, if not better. Dry banana leaves are used like bandages when bundles of matooke are being wrapped up for steaming. Strips and chunks cut from the banana tree stem can be used as a foundation at the bottom of the cooking pan so as to avoid the boiling water touching the bundle of the matooke being steamed.
I wish I was in Kenya to taste the gourmet versions, which are probably not entrail-laden. The dish, which can also be prepared with banana flour, may be coming to stores near you, according to a report published by the New Vision Ugandan news service. "We believe there is a huge market locally and globally for value added matooke products,” said. Dr. Florence Isabirye, director of the Ugandan Presidential Initiative on Banana Industrial Development Programme (PIBID.)
Here's a recipe for matooke. You can use green plantains. It won't be the same, but you'll get the idea.
Once again, scooped by BoingBoing. In Japan, Lucy and Snoopy hawk popcorn with "banana milk" flavor. Picture from Cory Doctorow's flickr stream.
PS, you can't buy the popcorn stateside, but somewhat yummy Nesquik banana milk is only as far as your local Circle-K, AM-PM, or Kum & Go or - and this is kind of weird - United Dairy Farmers convenience store. The latter is the family business that launched the career of Carl Lindner, former chairman of Chiquita.
Continue reading "Made in a plant that processes Peanuts®" »
"Although food vendor Debbie Hays and her family were among the vendors who weren't awarded a Big Tex trophy, they said they are still walking tall.
B.W.'s Original Fried Banana Pudding was the invention of Ms. Hays' brother, longtime concessionaire B.W. Morrow, who died of a heart attack earlier this year. His recipe was picked to be in the contest posthumously.
His wife and daughter came to the contest to see how everyone would respond to Mr. Morrow's last fair food contribution, banana pudding wrapped in a tortilla and fried.
The judges said it was deliciously comforting.
"He had worked on creating this for this year's fair," said Mr. Morrow's wife, Judy. "This is a real honor for us to be in the contest. He'd be proud."
Banana Twinkies - Return, oh primal filling - A full Zen circle
A pretty common banana tip is that if you've got a bunch that's getting too brown to eat, throw it into the freezer. They'll go black quicker, but they'll last long enough for you to make some delicious banana bread (you have to remove the bananas and let the softening process continue a bit to get the fruit to turn into the gooey glop needed to actually get the baking started.)
Kalee (my gf) made some the other night. She used a variation from Cook's Illustrated's "The Best Recipe" that calls for oversized chunks of unsweetened chocolate to balance the sugariness of the ultra-ripe fruit. Unfortunately, our lovely, 1930s-era, just-serviced oven conked out at the halfway marm, and we had to rush the pan into our toaster oven. (Yikes.)
Surprisingly, the bread turned out just fine - as this get-a-picture-before-its-gone snapshot shows.
Here's a link to a bunch of banana bread recipes, including one with chocolate chips.
