Food, Photography and Bon Mots
It’s National Chocolate Cake Day! Woo-hoo! Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.” Today’s Oldie But Goodie recipe is for a chocolate vinegar cake. Here is the link: Nana’s Vinegar…
“When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I…
Oh glorious banana bread! How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I’ve certainly baked my share of banana breads over the years and I’ve posted several very good recipes here on Blue Cayenne. Just type “banana bread” into the search box on this page and take a culinary journey through various approaches to the beloved dessert.
This recipe for Miso Pecan Banana Bread takes banana bread in a whole new (surprising and wonderful) direction. It incorporates white miso paste into the batter.
No. I’m not kidding.
It turns out that miso is a great addition to banana bread. The miso enhances the flavor of the bread giving it a carameley (is that a word?) flavor and texture. (Miso is a fermented soybean product available in the refrigerated case in most supermarkets. You can use it in all sorts of Asian marinades and it gives a delicious umami to soups and broths. It won’t go to waste. If you want to become a miso expert, here is a link to Japan’s Miso Board:Japan Miso Promotion Board. )
This is a recipe from The New York Times. You can find the original recipe here. The recipe’s author, Bryan Washington, also wrote a lovely feature piece about banana bread in the New York Times Magazine here. If you have a moment, you would, I think, enjoy reading his essay. It is a very nice piece of food writing weaving a personal experience with an ode to banana bread.
Here is the recipe for this delicious bread as I prepared it in my kitchen.
Apple pie is as American as…er…apple pie. Or, maybe not. It turns out that there are no apples native to the United States (except crabapples). Zero. Zip. None. Apples are believed to have originated in Asia. Apples were introduced to America by the Jamestown colonists.…
As the old Southern New Year’s saying goes, “Peas for pennies, greens for dollars, cornbread for gold.” In other words, these foods, when eaten on New Year’s Day, promise prosperity. My mother was in the black-eyed-pea school of Southern New Year’s cooks. I always wondered…
