Baked Bananas & Brooklyn Bagels

A look back at yesterday's meals


I habitually prefer to eat raw fruits at breakfast time, but occasionally, the mood strikes for something a little special.  Today was one of those times.  I felt as though a little extra richness in my morning meal would help me to knock this cold, so I opted for baked fruit.  Here's how I do it, in less than 5 minutes (not including the 30-min baking time).

First, assemble the fruits you want.  My favorites for this treatment are apples and, for a caramelized gooeyness that is a real treat, bananas.  You could also use pears, stone fruits, berries, whatever strikes your fancy and is in season.  I also toss in a handful of nuts and often some raisins.  Today's assortment included apples and bananas, diced into chunks, raw walnut halves, and hunza raisins:

Next, I load all of my ingredients into an overproof Pyrex measuring cup.  I like to put the nuts and raisins in first so they end up on the bottom, where they are protected from burning by the fruit on top of them.  Lastly, I add a dollop of butter on top, which will melt during the baking and coat all of the other ingredients, absorbing their sugars and creating a yummy sauce.  You could add a sprinkling of cinnamon, nutmeg, or cardamom if you like, and even some sugar or maple syrup, but by that time, you'd be making dessert, not breakfast.  Let's rein in our sweet tooth here, folks, before we end up serving this as a topping for vanilla ice cream.  (Notice how I diverted the blame right off myself?)

Ready to bake

Now I just pop the filled measure cup into my trusty countertop convection oven — less fortunate souls will have to heat up their entire full-sized oven for this — and bake it for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.  As the aromas develop, you will be strongly tempted to cut short the baking time and lunge into this sweet, buttery dish with your spoon.  Get ahold of yourself.  You will be disappointed that the fruit is not pleasingly soft.  (Of course, I am just imagining such an impulsive action, having never experienced it myself.)

If you manage to wait the full half-hour, as I did today, your fruit will have turned into something like the insides of a pie.  Dump it into a bowl, and enjoy.  (I have been known to pour a little milk over this concoction, but took it neat this morning.  Along with a cup of tea.  OK, 2 cups.)

Happy baked fruit breakfast!

Not feeling up to more cooking at lunchtime, and Peter being busy with laundry and his own blog (I would provide a link if 98% of my readership had not already come through Male Pattern Boldness), we decided to take the easy way out and go to Brooklyn.  

In our home, when we say "go to Brooklyn" we hardly ever are referring to the borough.  We mean the Brooklyn Bagel & Coffee Co., conveniently situated right on our block.  This marvelous little place opened up just as we were becoming disillusioned by the diminishing standards at Murray's Bagels down the street, and it deserves its own blog posting sometime, in which I'll explain why we adore it and why we high-tailed it out of Murray's, never again to return.  (Well, once, when I got really lazy and didn't want to cross the street to Brooklyn, and therefore obtained literally inedible bagel chips, but that's part of the other story.....)

How easily distracted I am!  I believe I was telling you about our lunch.  We shared a "mini" whole wheat everything bagel with whitefish and lettuce and a bowl of Mediterranean vegetable soup.  I put "mini" in "quotes" "because" (oops — I get carried away with "punctuation") because the mini bagels are what most people call "bagels" and the regular bagels are the size of a birthday cake.  Well, not quite, but they're TOO BIG, which results in a doughier texture.   (In the bagel, and, presumably, in the abdomen of anyone who consumes these things with regularity.)   I guess if you're looking for a doughy bagel, by all means, go for the regular, but we prefer a crustier one.

[Several hours pass]

So, after dinner I'm feeling a lot more positive about the eggplant/pasta bake from last night.  Another thing I love about leftovers is that you get an opportunity to fine-tune a dish.  Sort of like in tennis, where you get a second chance to re-do a botched serve.  (Get it?  Serve?  Sometimes my humor requires a rim shot for full effect.)

Anyhow......let me explain how I improved the eggplant/pasta dish upon re-baking.  First, I upended it into the baking dish, so that the pasta layer ended up on top, where it got delightfully crisped.  Maybe "crisp" is not the right word.  Certain of the individual pieces get partially dried out, which results in a chewy texture.  That's the word, "chewy."  (If you go too far with this drying-out process — I know this from experience — you do get to the crisp stage, which is not so pleasant.  Or maybe it is, for someone out there.  Just be aware that your pasta will go from floppy to chewy to crisp to hard-as-a-rock as it bakes.  Stop the oven when you get to your desired destination.)

I also grated about 7 pounds of additional Asiago cheese over the top, because, in my opinion, nothing is as delicious as baked cheese.  I'm exaggerating, folks — I'm sure it wasn't more than 5 pounds of extra cheese.  (Drinking wine as I cook frees me from all kinds of inhibitions.)

Let's take a moment here to list some of the reasons we ADORE leftovers.  (I realize not everyone is in my camp here.  My best friend's boyfriend refuses to eat anything left over.  Which is one of the reasons he's not MY boyfriend.  Not to mention I'm already taken.)

• They make for an easy meal down the line.  We cooks do not feel like pulling out all our stops every night of the week.  Geez.
• You get a second chance at creating the dish you had envisioned.
• Many foods taste even better after sitting for a while, their flavors developing over time.
• Often, the cook is too tired to even taste his dish upon first presentation.  Or too sick of staring at it.  With the benefit of a little cushion of time, we can properly assess our own creation.  (I guess this explains why kids get sent to summer camp.)
• They make for an easy meal down the line.  (Oh, did I already say this?  And did I mention that I don't feel like pulling out all — —  — oh, I did?)
• You get to try out variations each time you trot out a left-over ingredient.  I am particularly brilliant with turning plain old cooked pulses (dried beans) into a myriad of seemingly unrelated dishes.  Or so I am told.  (By me.)

So, readers, why do YOU love leftovers?  Or, if you're in that other camp (the less desirable one across the lake), why do you dislike them?  (What's wrong with you, anyway?)

Have a great weekend, everybody!  Check back in tomorrow if you're not off doing something exotic (and maybe just a leetle beet naughty?) — I'll be exposing the truth about. . .

. . .the Urban Organic produce delivery service.