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04/16/08 |
                          
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Island Banana Bread
Yields 2 big loaves
8 ea. mushy-ripe bananas 1 1/3 c. sugar 2 ea. eggs 1 1/4 c. creamy peanut butter 1/4 c. sesame oil 1/2 c. whole milk 1 T. five-spice powder 4 c. AP flour 2 1/2 t. baking powder 1/2 t. salt 1/2 t. white pepper 1 c. crushed walnuts
Preheat oven to 350 and lube up a couple 8x4 loaf pans.
In a large bowl, beat the bejeezus out of the bananas, then add sugar, eggs, peanut butter, sesame oil and milk. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, five-spice, baking powder, salt and pepper. Slowly add dry mix to wet mix, then fold in walnuts. Divide batter between the two prepared pans. If you've got extra...well, improvise. I'm sure you can figure it out. Bake at 350 for about 50-55 minutes or until that toothpick test thing comes out clean. Let rest a few minutes, then empty out onto a waiting cooling rack (you've got one of those, right?). Bread may either be served warm or cold, with or without accompaniments.
Note from GG: My roomie americankorean has a tendency to get more bananas than he can eat, so I was called upon to make do with the over-ripe but still edible remains. Having tired of the "same ol', same ol'" while also having recently finished a book on Caribbean cuisine, I came up with this. I'm pretty proud of the results, though they could have potentially killed the pastry chef at Rays due to her sesame allergy. Everyone who tried it said that it was delicious, though I'm not sure if they were just being nice to me or not. One of the supervisors at Rays, Tammi, said that it was best served with nothing more than swab of butter, while americankorean liked it the way it was. You can do what you want with the stuff, knowing that it's really yummy while still being a bit different than the norm. The funny thing about this bread is that neither the peanut butter nor the five-spice nor the sesame are overt flavours. Rather, you can smell (or, at the most, taste them on your palate) them while eating the bread, instead of tasting them. It's kind of a cool effect that I only kind of planned on. In a strange sense, that's the spirit of Japanese cuisine: Make the flavours emphasize the main ingredient instead of masking it. The five-spice and sesame make the banana seem that much sweeter, while controlling the overall sweetness of the dish. Very cool.
This site was last updated 12/20/06 |
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