Banana bread buried in the middle

The prettiest thing I've made lately, if not the very best.

Day before yesterday, late afternoon, I was about to unload the dishwasher and thought I would mind the chore less if I had something to listen to. Although I had tried and failed to read it several decades ago, I decided to download The Screwtape Letters. by by C.S. Lewis because it was cheap ($5.95) and short. For the next 3.5 hours I did not at all mind unloading the dishwasher, cleansing a mildewy lunchbox, reducing tangerine juice, sterilizing the drawer organizers, mixing another loaf of banana bread, and then baking a completely gratuitous marmalade tart for dessert because I could not stop listening. A book beloved by both Sarah Palin (well, supposedly) and David Foster Wallace? And me?

You have to read this book!

I've baked three banana bread recipes since I last posted on the topic, omitting nuts and chocolate (when called for) partly because they would skew the comparisons, but mostly because I like the texture of banana bread to replicate the smooth, custardy texture of an actual banana.

perfect banana bread and burnt banana bread

1. The banana bread recipe from Joanne Chang's Flour (recommended by Nora K and printed here) was the most perfect and beautiful loaf. Owen thought it was less moist than my usual Beth Hensperger's recipe, but ate huge chunks of it nonetheless. He was right about it being slightly less moist, but then he and I like banana bread that is almost wet -- a bread some would describe as "dense" and "heavy." Chang's bread is light. Her recipe calls for cinnamon which I would omit in future because I like unadulterated banana flavor. But that's just my taste. This is a truly fantastic banana bread and I highly recommend. (If you make the recipe using the version online, choose a 9x5 inch loaf pan and please note that the original recipe as printed in Chang's book calls for heating the oven to 325 degrees F. Nora K said yogurt can be substituted for the sour cream/creme fraiche so I used yogurt and it worked great.)

2. The roasted banana bread from Kristin's recipe smelled incredible, first when the bananas were roasting and later when the bread was baking. I also loved the way the recipe was written. I don't ever actually mash bananas in a bowl, always drop them directly from their peels into the mixer and I appreciated seeing a recipe acknowledge this shortcut. Sadly, I managed to burn this loaf -- a thick layer of burn. But that the unburnt middle layer had the mightiest banana flavor of the loaves I've baked so far.

3. The Braddock Tavern banana bread recipe posted by Sarah Policastro in the comments to the original banana bread post is the closest to the benchmark Hensperger recipe. I think it might be better, but I would have to taste the two side by side. This recipe uses butter (which you cream rather than melt), 5 bananas (required to fill 2 cups -- lots!) and some applesauce. I made one big loaf, baked it for a longer time than specified for two small loaves, refrigerated the loaf overnight and ended up with a custardy and creamy bread, almost like a pudding. I love this bread, which is totally different from the other two banana breads and probably the closest to my personal ideal.

maybe underbaked, but very tasty.

4. I also baked the banana blondies from Short and Sweet by Dan Lepard. (Recipe here; you'll need a metric scale.) They are a gooey confection packed with bananas, white chocolate, and brazil nuts and of course they are in a whole separate category from banana bread. These blondies are the work, as Screwtape might put it, of "our Father below." I ate one blondie and am not allowed near the rest.

End of banana bread claptrap. For now.

******

On another subject, Nancy Silverton's Mozza got me started cooking mussels which I'd always thought of as "special," but which turn out to be fast and cheap and great for weeknights. Don't wait to order them in restaurants; they're much easier to make at home than a pot of soup. The other day I steamed mussels according to Big Sur Bakery Cookbook's very rudimentary recipe (white wine, herbs) but the resulting mussels couldn't hold a candle to that original zesty Silverton recipe. My husband said, "You should only make those first mussels you made." He is right. I have found my mussels.

Owen: "I didn't like them."

This past week, I also made seared scallops with cauliflower puree and tangerine reduction out of The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook. It sounds fussy, but was super-easy.You start with big sea scallops -- expensive, but you only need 2 per person. Boil 1 cup of tangerine juice (recipe says fresh; I used bottled) until it's reduced to 2 tablespoons of jammy syrup. Boil a cut-up head of cauliflower for 12 minutes and puree with 1/2 cup warm cream and 1/4 cup of chicken broth. You season then sear the scallops in a lightly oiled skillet, 3 minutes per side. Scrape cauliflower puree onto a plate (you can put everything on one platter, but I think this dish looks better apportioned to individual plates), place scallops on cauliflower, pour tangerine reduction on scallops. You now have a dinner that looks fancy, tastes wonderful, and requires almost no effort. Your kids might not eat this, which means more scallops for you. Detailed recipe is here.

topped with grapefruit, blood orange, cara cara orange

Finally, as mentioned, I baked the gorgeous marmalade tart from Big Sur Bakery. It's a generous rectangle of sweet dough topped with a cup of marmalade, homemade almond cream (sugar, orange rind, butter, chopped almonds) and sliced citrus fruit. My husband was wildly enthusiastic, but only after he picked off the wheels of stringy and bitter grapefruit. A very slight adaptation of the recipe is here; I agree with Blue Ridge Baker that the dough needs much more liquid than called for. If you try this, I'd go with oranges for the topping and skip the grapefruit, which (unlike bananas) is apparently not enhanced by baking.

I'm out of breath now and you've probably stopped reading, but this recipe from Food52 is intriguing.

Too many banana blondies?

I don't expect you to agree with me

shudder

I spent the last three days in Big Sur for a story and I'll tell you here what I almost surely won't say in the article which is that I find this place dreadful in the most primal sense of the word. It's incredibly beautiful. That (borrowed) picture doesn't begin to capture the Caribbean blue inlets, the waterfalls, the soaring raptors, the enormous sky. Wow! Beautiful. But Snow White's stepmother is also very beautiful, at least in the Disney movie.

The Pacific Ocean makes me deeply uneasy. Always has. I think it's beautiful, but I also think it's a terrible and annihilating body of water, loud and angry and powerful and it never, ever shuts up. It crashes and roars and smashes itself against rocks and occasionally out of this tumult comes a sleeper wave. The Pacific Ocean is also icy cold. If you get the crazy idea of taking a swim in the freezing water, look around for the sign warning you of dangerous undertow, perhaps featuring a drowning stick figure. The sign is always there. It should be heeded, unless you are a surfer in which case, I am in awe of you. Go with God. My mother's friend Nicole drowned in the Pacific.

Worst of all, the Pacific is full of great white sharks.

Anyway, the Pacific is pretty integral to the Big Sur experience. The other thing about Big Sur: cliffs. Big Sur is essentially one very high, very long cliff overlooking the frigid home of the great white sharks. I can't drive in Big Sur without thinking how easy it would be to accidentally steer off of a cliff. Just one little slip of the hand while replacing the disc in the CD player. . .

It's very beautiful. Really! It's beautiful and scary, at least if you're me. You should come here some day.

Also, there's wonderful food.

my favorite Big Sur landscape

I don't usually drink chai, but the chai at the Big Sur Bakery is incredible, like a nectar in a fairy story. I dipped the donut (homemade) in the chai and spent a very happy three minutes over breakfast on Saturday morning. I went back in the afternoon for another chai, and then went back for dinner and ordered the roast chicken -- brined and cooked in the wood-fired oven -- which was pricey, but great, great, great. I've come around on the Big Sur Bakery since I first visited a couple of years ago. The young husband-wife owners used to work at Campanile and I read their book over the weekend. It charmed me. Yesterday, on the way to hike to a waterfall, I stopped in and bought a really terrific oatmeal-raisin cookie. When I'm done with banana bread, I'm going after oatmeal cookies.

More banana bread claptrap coming your way soon. I drive home today. Actually, right now.

I'm a busy and important person with a very stressful life

french toast that looks like pancakes

I forced myself to choose some recipes from John Besh's My Family Table: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking and am going to cook them and decide whether to keep the book or donate it to the library. I only bought the book a month or so ago, but it rubs me the wrong way, starting with the subtitle. More on that later.

Yesterday I made Besh's Nutella-stuffed french toast. I had to. Every day Owen comes home from school and spreads a piece of untoasted bread thickly with Nutella and that is his snack. I made Nutella from scratch a few times, but he prefers the waxy store product and I gave up trying to elevate his tastes. It's not very healthy and I should stop buying it. Wait! I don't buy it. My husband buys it.

Besh's Nutella-stuffed french toast involves putting a dollop of Nutella in the middle of a slice of sandwich bread which you top with another slice. I would not use rough whole wheat bread or artisanal bread for this; it should be soft white bread, storebought or homemade. Now cut a circular shape around the blob of Nutella, sealing the doughy edges of two slices of bread. (Besh specifies a dull juice glass and you mustn't substitute a biscuit cutter; I tried and it doesn't smash the bread together enough form a seal.) Soak very briefly in a rich french toast batter (eggs, melted butter, sugar, milk, vanilla, orange juice) and fry. The recipe is here.

Should you make it? I don't like Nutella and only ate the plain bread part, so can't comment on whether this is an exquisite treat or disgustingly rich. Owen said it was "more like dessert than a breakfast." My husband had thirds.

before it looked like pancakes, it looked like Uncrustables

Some thoughts:

-wasteful of bread. We gave the crusts to the chickens and of course you could make bread crumbs. But french toast that uses the entire slice is more efficient.

-unhealthy

-the french toast batter: excellent. On account of the melted butter? The boatload of sugar? Orange juice? Made very sweet and custardy french toast.

-Besh specifies frying french toast in oil. I think it was Molly Wizenberg who swore by frying french toast in oil. I remember thinking at the time, no, no, no, she's wrong, butter. I've changed my mind; she's right.

This morning, I decided to check A Homemade Life to be sure I hadn't misremembered Wizenberg's comments on the subject, but couldn't find the book anywhere. Distressing! I started thinking about other recipes from her book that I didn't want to lose and remembered the chocolate chip banana bread. Or at least I thought there was a recipe for chocolate chip banana bread. . .

Then I started thinking about banana bread. I love banana bread and make it a lot. Why are some recipes so much tastier than others? Decided to cross-reference the recipes in Joy of Cooking, Fannie Farmer, and other stalwarts to see what I might learn. Got carried away and ended up looking in the indexes of all my cookbooks and "studying" banana bread recipes.

Fact: There are 104 different banana recipes under our roof.

When I staggered to my feet after this riveting exercise, hours had passed. It was lunchtime. I ate a piece of banana bread I'd baked recently using Recipes from Miss Daisy's. It's a bit dry and I now knew why: because it calls for butter. I had figured out that all the recipes I most love call for oil, which yields a moister bread. Obviously. Because oil is not just moister than butter, oil is actually liquid. This is unappetizing when you think about it.

I am now a banana bread expert. Ask me anything! I can tell you that some people replace the oil with whipped prunes or applesauce and use egg whites instead of whole eggs. Dwight Yoakam likes banana bread made with whole wheat flour. Nigella soaks golden raisins in rum and tosses them into her loaf, while Mark Bittman prefers coconut and the wizardly Shirley Corriher folds whipped cream into the batter. (This, I am going to try.) Other people fortify their banana breads with Wheat Chex, wheat germ, bran, and Bisquick. Cooks stir in black coffee, maraschino cherries, candied citron, sesame seeds, mango, fresh cranberries, cocoa powder, or marmalade. You can flavor with rum, almond extract, vanilla, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, lemon peel, orange oil, allspice, cinnamon, or none of the above. Use more sugar or less, or replace the sugar with honey or Lyle's Golden Syrup. Barley flour? Sure. Rice flour? Why not. You can even make sourdough banana bread, though I wouldn't.

It was fun.

I may be a little underemployed.

This is just to say

In the last 30 hours:

1. I ordered a copy of Yellowthread Street. Anonymous, you have no idea how excited I am at the prospect of not just a new detective series, but one that is set in Hong Kong.

2. I began flipping through Short and Sweet by Dan Lepard. I've owned the book for a few months, but extracted it from a towering stack because of Steven's high praise in a recent comment. I then baked Lepard's rye and raisin cookies.* They are magnificent. Try them! 

3. I bought a Sumo fruit. It was every bit as crazy delicious as Kristin said it would be in another recent comment. Found it at Whole Foods. Marked as a tangerine; only in small print did it say "Sumo fruit."

This is all just to say how much I love your comments on my blog. I'm highly suggestible and if you mention something, it will stick in my head forever. Oreo balls? The chocolate pots de creme from Kate Zuckerman's Sweet Life? Cafe Rehobeth? You've probably forgotten. I haven't.

So thank you.

*Husband thought they were too sweet, Isabel doesn't like raisins, and Owen would rather eat the giant Pocky sticks brought back from Hong Kong and strew the wrappers all over the house. I love my family, but they are mistaken about these cookies. The cookies are outstanding.

I would rather be eating spicy crab

It WASN'T like this.

I have no enthusiasm for cooking this week, a hangover from our trip to Hong Kong. Buy the bread, buy the butter. Better yet, go to a cha chaang teng and pay someone to spread the butter on the bread and serve it to you with sweetened condensed milk and a cup of hot Hong Kong milk tea. Walk home to your shoebox apartment, stretch out on the bed, listen to the air conditioner rattle, and read a John Le Carre novel. Preferably one set in Hong Kong.

We're back from our trip. I loved Hong Kong. LOVED. Much more than expected. As I mentioned before, no one in Hong Kong cooks because home kitchens are tiny and restaurants so plentiful, excellent, and cheap. Honestly, it didn't seem like such a bad way to live. If I could walk down the street for crispy roast goose instead of roasting my own chicken? I'd never turn on the oven again.

But I don't think there's a roast goose to be had in this entire county. The closest restaurant to our house: Taco Bell. And it's not that close.

I made lentil and red pepper soup from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook last night because I was feeling so half-hearted about the domestic arts and the recipe looked really easy. It was really easy and it was really unexciting, as is usually the case with lentil soup. But the oranges with rosemary honey from the same book were even easier than the soup and they were improbably spectacular.

I don't generally gush over simple fruit desserts as I don't think a piece of fresh, seasonal fruit makes the perfect dessert. I think it makes a really disappointing dessert. These oranges, however, are delicious and rich, which is mysterious because they contain no rich ingredients. Don't skip the rosemary; I think the rosemary is what gives that curious illusion of richness.

Zuni Cafe's oranges with rosemary honey

1/4 cup honey
4 teaspoons water
leaves from a small sprig of rosemary, bruised with the back of a knife
4 oranges

1. In a very small saucepan or a large metal measuring cup combine the honey, water, and rosemary. Over low heat, simmer until melted. Watch closely so the syrup doesn't boil over. When it is runny, turn off heat and let it steep until you are ready to use it, at least 20 minutes.

2. Cut the bottoms and tops from the oranges, just enough to expose the juicy flesh. To quote Judy Rodgers: "Set the fruit on end and use a paring knife to carve away the skin and pith in a series of smooth arc-like strokes from top to bottom, rotating the orange a little with each stroke. (Most of us misjudge and miss a little pith on the first go-round, but this is easy to trim once you've removed the bulky skin.")

3. Slice the oranges thinly -- less than 1/4 inch thick -- and lay them on 4 serving plates. Drizzle with the honey. Serves 4.

Our day with the Tiger Cooking Teacher

The scornful eye of Martha was upon her, poor Isabel.

You enter Martha Sherpa's cooking school through a barred metal door of the grim model you might find in a minimum security prison. You walk down a damp, grimy hall and ascend in an ancient elevator to the humid second floor kitchen where Martha holds court. When Isabel and I arrived yesterday, she loomed unsmiling in the doorway and pointed to the shelf where we were to place our bags and umbrellas. No names were exchanged. There were four of us in the class on Chinese bread baking. (Martha also teaches dim sum, wok cookery, and desserts.) In addition to Isabel and me, there was a young Filipina maid whose boss wants her to start baking bread, and an American expatriate businesswoman who likes to cook.

"Do like this."

How to describe Martha? Very hard. Imagine a cross between Amy Chua, Rosie O'Donnell, and Simon Cowell. Give this person a thick Cantonese accent and dress her in a white coat and green surgical mask. This will give you a vague idea of the wonder that is Martha Sherpa.

And this will give you a vague idea of the wonder that is Martha Sherpa's teaching style:

Martha: "Pat that flat."

Student, fumbling, tries to pat some pasty filling on the metal work table.

Martha. "No. Wrong! Like this."

a mighty and dexterous hand

Student tries again.

Martha, wearily: "No. Too slow. Wrong."

Student tries again. Asks: "Is this okay?"

Martha: "Clearly not okay."

She tosses things at you. A rag to wipe the table. A ball of dough to shape. A scraper to scrape up a microscopic particle of dough that you left on the counter and which must be reincorporated into your bread. It is all commands and rebukes and I suppose this is a very gentle version of the way she herself was taught to cook in Hong Kong restaurant kitchens.

And you know what? After a short, bracing adjustment period, it was great. We were mixing, pounding, kneading, slamming, stretching, washing, scraping, baking, and fielding criticism for seven hours and at the end of it we really knew stuff.

I've given the impression that Martha was horrid. She was not. Although she was formidably rude, she was also funny and candid and entertaining and even Isabel was giggling by the end of the day. In between issuing commands and concocting insults, Martha told stories about disgracefully spoiled Hong Kong children and perfidious bakers who lace their bread with chemicals, about the going rate paid to Filipina "helpers" (she blames the helpers for spoiling Hong Kong children) and the foolish entrepreneurs who come to her class for one day and think they can move to San Francisco or Penang and open a restaurant.

pineapple buns

We made five different breads: pineapple buns, cocktail buns, coconut bread, raisin bread, and chicken hot dogs wrapped in dough. All the breads were fluffy, buttery, sweet, and delicious. (Even the hot dog rolls were sweet.)

Some general facts about Chinese bread:

-Butter is always salted butter.

-Whole milk powder is often used, just like in the Milk Bar cookbook; nonfat dried milk powder is not a substitute. I'm going to try to buy some proper milk powder at the supermarket down the street from our hotel.

-Unlike Western bread, Chinese bread is served steaming hot. It is torn apart, not cut, and it is eaten all at once; you don't break a loaf and save the rest for later.

-The Chinese detest crusts, so surfaces are brushed with syrup to keep them soft.

coconut bread

-What the Chinese call bread is what most Westerners would call "sweet rolls."

At the end of the class, the other American woman in the class declined to comment in Martha's guest book. She rolled her eyes and said, "That was fun, but I don't know what to make of her. " Isabel declined to comment as well.

I commented. I wrote that this class was the highlight of my trip to Hong Kong and unless something miraculous happens today or tomorrow, that will be the truth.

Martha's stove

Donut wrapped in a noodle? Oh, why not.

deep-fried carbohydrate wrapped in steamed carbohydrate

We took a culinary walking tour yesterday. Very expensive but the guide, traval writer Daisann McLane, was encyclopedic in her knowledge and explained countless oddities in shops and markets, from bundles of dried fish bladders to sharks' fins and sharks' bones and a weird black grass that symbolizes prosperity and is sprinkled over dinner. We passed a dark little snake shop where cages of serpents surround a table at which customers can sit and consume bowls of reptile soup, a winter favorite. I wanted to do this and Daisann said it was delightful, but Isabel flatly refused.

Everything we ate on the tour was delicious. My favorite was a crusty wand-shaped cruller wrapped in cold, slippery rice noodles and cut into bite sized pieces. See above. You squirt hoisin sauce on top, sprinkle with sesame seeds and, if you wish, dunk this sweet-savory-cool-bready-fried tidbit into a bowl of warm congee. Isabel unpeeled the noodles and ate just the cruller on its own; she said that thus doctored, it was her favorite dish of the day as well.

Atkins friendly

My father most loved the Chiu Chow goose, which sat on a bed of tofu and came with a bowl of vinegar to offset the meaty oiliness. I loved this too. Isabel managed to resist. We also tried a bowl of Chiu Chow rice soup with baby oysters. Lots of baby oysters in this town.

good enough for Chiang Kai-shek

Superlatives apply to the noodles at Mak's, a shop basically everyone told us to visit. The broth was clear and flavorful, the shrimp-stuffed wontons tiny and adorable, the scallions dainty and white, the noodles very long. Isabel thought her bowl of noodles was too fishy, but made a big effort to eat some so as not to offend.

According to Daisann, people in Hong Kong mostly don't cook -- they go out for all their meals because restaurant food is fast, abundant, delicious and cheap and kitchens are minuscule and ovens almost nonexistent. If I could walk out my front door and find any of the dishes we ate yesterday, I wouldn't cook either.

Isabel said to me later, "I don't like Chinese food, but even I feel it's stupid not to eat Chinese food here. I blame you for that."

I have not labored in vain.