Of Course You Have Some Bananas
During a recent drawer de-cluttering I discovered a packet of recipe cards from the phase of my cooking life known as Early Marriage or Bride in the Kitchen. Highlights of the period included many failed Hollandaise attempts, way too many sauces based on canned soups and an astonishingly awful shrimp dish that called for four cloves of garlic which I interpreted as four clusters/heads of garlic.
J — whose mother had advised him to encourage my cooking efforts by eating whatever I set in front of him — actually broke out in a sweat about halfway through his portion, all the while assuring me, “No, I wouldn’t say it’s too garlic-y.”
One recipe I rediscovered, however, is definitely share-worthy: a citrusy banana sherbet. It came from an elderly woman in Dallas who acted as if divulging her long-held-secret recipe was a very big deal. Usually if you dig a little into the background of these “treasured family recipes” from the 1940s and 50s you’ll find they originated on the back of a sugar box or within the pages of The Betty Crocker Cookbook. Whatever its beginnings, this sherbet makes a very nice ending to a late-winter meal.
Banana Sherbet
Combine and boil: for a few minutes:
3 TB. grated orange rind
3 cups sugar
3 cups water
1/4 tsp salt
Chill the resulting syrup.
Add the juice of 3 oranges and 3 lemons plus 2 large (or 3 small) bananas, mashed.
Freeze in an ice cream freezer.
[Margin Note: technically this is closer to a sorbet than a sherbet, as the latter usually has milk or cream in it--but the recipe card, in the Dallas dowager's hand, calls it a sherbet and who am I to dispute it? In truth, the mashed banana does give it a creamy texture.]
Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 8:44 pmand is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
