Managing bananas

This is one of those posts inspired by my daily diary painting. Today's is by a follower of Paul Gauguin called Paul Sérusier (who I had never heard of) and is a still life that includes a bowl of fruit. The bowl of fruit closely resembled our own bowl of fruit (well the contents, not the form) which, in our case, contained two rotting bananas - which I have now, very guiltily thrown away, because they really are too far gone even for banana bread. So I thought I would write about bananas - not about what to do with them, just a bit of musing on bananas.

Jane Grigson describes bananas in the spotty state - the same as the ones in our fruit bowl - in terms that I really would not recognise because for me an overripe banana is really quite stomach churning. But obviously, as with everything, we are all different people with quite different opinions. For this is what she says:

"In a warm house, they will soon turn the familiar yellow, the yellow patched with brown, which is when they begin to be worth eating. As they turn completely brown, they mellow to a translucent honey, ideal for fools, mousses, ice creams and for sandwiches ... At this late aromatic stage, they are well set off by crushed praline or toasted almonds; walnuts go with them at a slightly earlier stage."

For me they are gone as soon as the brown spots appear. And in Melbourne where it is either very warm in the summer, or well-heated in winter, a banana seems to go off in no time at all. In vain do I try to prevent my husband from buying big bunches of them and inevitably we seem to always end up throwing some out. If it was left to me I would buy just two or three at a time.

As far as cooking is concerned there are literally hundreds and hundreds of things you can do with them from the savoury to the sweet. Some of them surprising, some of them not. In the West Indies and Africa too I think, they cook them as a sort of carbohydrate accompaniment to food. They call them plantains then, but according to N.W. Simmonds who wrote a book on the subject of bananas, "Europeans often use 'Plantain' for any banana that is eaten in the cooked state assuming, presumably, that all such bananas must be starchy; in fact the vast majority of them are sweet at maturity and cooking is a matter of customs rather than necessity." Jane Grigson describes these green bananas as "one of the dullest things eaten by man." Anyway it seems to be that plantains are really just green bananas.

I learnt a few surprising things about bananas in my rudimentary net surfing.

First of all It is very possibly the oldest fruit eaten by man - originating in the Indonesia/New Guinea part of the world and being exported by the intrepid Arabs to the rest of the world via the Canaries, and the West Indies most notably. Some people have even claimed that it was the fruit on the Tree of Knowledge. Originally it had more seeds and less flesh, but was subsequently bred to be as we know it today. Here in Australia it was introduced by the Chinese back in the days of the Gold Rush, who planted the first plantations.

Today over 90% of Australia's bananas are grown in far north Queensland - mostly around Innisfail and Tully. Some are also grown in WA and the Northern Territory, and also further south in New South Wales, but most are from Queensland. Which may well mean that we are about to suffer another banana drought because of Cyclone Debbie. Nobody has mentioned bananas so far - just sugar, tomatoes and capsicum, but surely the bananas must have been affected too.

It's not a palm tree but a kind of lily although it grows to tree size. Harvesting and transporting bananas these days would not be a problem because of speedy transport methods. But can you imagine back in the early days of its eating when the only method of transportation from distant places was by sailing ships? No doubt they were picked completely green, but nevertheless it would have been a dicey crop to export. Never mind the poisonous spiders that seem to inhabit the bunches. My guess is that they are now removed - either chemically or by sprays of water or something. Occupational health and safety would make it difficult otherwise. Sailing ships became much faster and then of course there was steam - and now we have really fast ships and also air - so no problem with transport. Here in Australia it's probably mostly moved by trucks.

The Australian banana industry has its own website of course and it contains quite a lot of interesting and useful information.

There are hundreds of different kinds of bananas but really only two are commercially produced - the Cavendish and Lady Fingers. The Lady Fingers are better, sweeter but a bit more expensive. I would imagine that the way Australian horticulture is going, there may well be more varieties being produced in the future. I've seen pictures of red ones for example, though I have never seen any in the shops. You would think that this would not be a good thing wouldn't you? Genetic diversity and all of that - if you have monocultures there is much more danger of disease, although the Australian industry claims there is not, because there are no imported bananas here. It might be a problem elsewhere though. The Cavendish by the way is named after one of the Dukes of Devonshire, (surname Cavendish) whose gardeners developed it.

Another rather mind-blowing fact that I came across is that bananas are the fourth most valuable food crop in the world. I mean in total value, not how much they cost a kilo! Somebody out there is eating a lot of bananas. And I guess we all do. I know when I was working, for a period that was my lunch - a banana. Not enough I know, but I have always been bad about preparing packed lunches. Children like them - they are practical things to put in lunch boxes - though again - if they are at the brown spot stage they start to smell rather nasty and infect everything else in the lunch box. Well that's what I remember anyway. Indeed that smell travels everywhere once they are on the way out. Horrible.

Healthwise they are loaded with potassium and are supposed to be good for the heart, for asthma and for preventing cancer, though this has not been undeniably proved as yet. Opinion seemed to be divided about whether a banana for breakfast was a good thing or not. Apparently they are 25% sugar and can indeed give you a temporary boost, but they are also acidic and this leads to a let down. So you should combine them with some form of fat - yoghurt for example. Others, though would say they are a very good thing for breakfast. But then they might be talking about smoothies, and muesli, etc.

I know I have sounded a bit dubious about bananas, but I actually really like the perfect banana. It's just that it is so difficult to get it at just the right moment. I love them on their own, in banana sandwiches, with ice-cream (and dare I say, just a little bit of sugar), and I do quite like banana bread, but not that often. When I was a student in America existing on virtually no money I used to eat a banana split for lunch sometimes - I reasoned that it had fruit and dairy in it as well as some nuts I guess. I think I was kidding myself. I've just got to buy a few at a time, not a big bunch.