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Caribbean
Food and Drink, Products, Market Overview of Ethnic Foods
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Bananas
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| Elisabeth
Luard pays tribute to this succulent, versatile
fruit, whose global popularity has placed it at
the centre of a political storm. Photographs by
David Loftus |
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The
Cinderella of the fruit bowl, miraculous with cream,
mandatory with morning cornflakes, marvellous at
the midday break, the banana has no fixed season.
As with all tropical fruit, we may enjoy it when
we please. And what better time than now, when winter’s
fruits have lost their sparkle and the first spring
berries have yet to ripen on the stalk?
So transportable, so digestible, so satisfying,
the banana is the victim of its own perfection.
If it weren’t so cheap, so universally obtainable,
we’d value it as a tropical luxury. Its merrily
priapic shape - God’s gift to the bar-room comedian
- contributes to its charm. Carmen Miranda flaunted
it; Elvis came to sticky end on it (fried in a sandwich,
with peanut butter and bacon); President Reagan’s
son unzipped it on tv to demonstrate how to put
on a condom. Now peel it and savour its fragrance,
complex as designer perfume - a hint of vanilla,
a touch of spice, a whisper of jasmine. The texture
is unctuous, offering little resistance to the teeth.
The taste is buttery, honeyed, robust, with an underlying
sweetness.
To those not intimate with its habitat, the banana
tree can come as something of a surprise. In fact,
it’s not a tree at all but a gigantic grass, an
ancient cultivar of the genus Musa. It has a rhizome
rather than a root, a trunk formed from its own
overlapping leaves, and a flowering stalk with a
remarkably sexy-looking male blossom - huge scarlet
bracts which peel back to expose a pointed ivory
bud. In comparison, the female blooms seem small
and insignificant, but it is they that produce the
fruit, semicircular ‘hands’ which cup the stem like
elegant emerald bracelets. Left to its own devices,
the plant can grow to ten metres, although the insecurity
of its footing and the weight of the fruit - as
many as 200 per stalk - can cause it to topple before
its time. The mat, the carpet of shoots sent out
by a single rhizome, can live for 50 years or more,
creating a jungle of broken stalks and dried-out
leaves which snap and rattle underfoot.
The Cavendish is the main dessert banana, but there
is a great deal of variety to be found in size and
colour. The pretty baby bananas, known as ladies’
fingers, are exquisitely scented and very sweet
- children love them. The red-skinned variety often
has flesh with an orange tinge - a good cooker,
delicious roasted in the skin, split and sprinkled
with cinnamon and brown sugar. When very ripe, the
flesh softens and browns - perfect for banana bread.
Heating the ripe fruit emphasises its starchiness,
making the flavour more robust, the flesh more chewy.
The plantain, a green (unripened) banana, is inedible
raw, but when cooked it’s more like a root than
a fruit, starchy and bland, the ideal background
for Creole stews and West Indian curries. As with
all unripe fruit, it’s difficult to peel: you need
a sharp knife and a strong wrist.
Politically, the banana is something of a hot potato.
Most of the world’s exports come from central and
southern America - Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador,
Colombia - which produce what are known as dollar
bananas, a trade controlled by two us corporations,
Dole and Chiquita. The pair wield considerable political
clout, and it’s their objections to the agreements
reached in the postwar years by Europe’s ex-colonial
powers to favour their own dependents which triggered
the recent trade war between Washington and Brussels.
Europe’s bananas traditionally come from the non-dollar
or acp (African-Caribbean-Pacific) countries. Much
of the fruit on uk shelves is grown in the Windward
Islands, where some 3,500 small farmers work thin
volcanic soil on steep slopes in uncertain weather
conditions, conditions which permit the fruit to
develop more slowly - resulting, the producers maintain,
in bananas with thinner skins and a finer flavour
than those grown in flat fields under constant sunshine.
The Dominican Republic leads the way producing increasingly
popular organics, delicious little fruits, well
worth the premium. Many of the Windward farms are
already in transition, although organic certification
is still at least a year away.
It is to be hoped the Caribbean producers survive
the current politico-economic onslaught for long
enough to achieve organic status, if only for the
sake of our taste buds. Windward bananas have a
natural succulence and delicacy of flavour not shared
by the dollar-bananas - by comparison fat, floury
and flavourless. But don’t take my word for it.
Suck one and see. Then vote, like those who put
the thumbscrews on our politicians, with your purse. |
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Source: Waitrose.com
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