12 Nov 2025
Elena Hogg, founder of local culinary company FOOD by Elena, celebrates the joys of the yellow (and sometimes red) fruit…
Bananas. For me, one of the only comfort foods that can be eaten in its natural form, unadulterated by processing of any kind and yet still soothing to the soul.
Why so soothing? Well, unless you’re eating an unripe banana, which has a kind of woody bite to it and the capacity to dry out your mouth like you’ve just swallowed cotton wool, bananas are soft and yielding. The taste is equally comforting because it’s honeyed and creamy, but still with that exotic flavour profile.
The ultimate in luxury, really, even though their ubiquity countermands such an accolade. After all, bananas are readily and cheaply available all year round and have quite the reputation for outstaying their welcome in the fruit bowl, becoming sad, sagging brown things. And whatever you do, never carry one around in your rucksack or handbag. Even the perkiest banana becomes mush within precisely four minutes of being transported anywhere. Will not travel.
When I think back to my most treasured memories, I realise bananas feature with startling regularity, and hold a poignant place in our food journey through life. I remember, for example, my husband’s and my first big travel adventure, which was to India for a two-week cycling tour in Kerala, followed by eight days in Jaipur, Delhi and Agra.
On day one in Kerala, we discovered red bananas. We have since tried in vain to find them over here, and we still bore people at length about them. More buttery than their yellow counterparts, slightly less sugary and squatter in shape, they essentially fuelled our days’ cycling in thirty-plus degrees and up some serious inclines.
A wonderful family with whom we stayed on one particular cycling leg in Kottayam taught us another banana iteration which we have enthusiastically adopted into our everyday lives: steamed bananas for breakfast. What a revelation. Put over-ripe bananas, in their skins, into a steamer and wait about ten minutes. Don’t attempt with under-ripe – it doesn’t work. Once a knife finds no resistance at all when inserted into the banana, you know they’re done.
Be careful taking them out of the steamer because they’re very floppy by this point. Once plated, slice along the length of the banana, just skin-deep, and pull apart the skin gently. I know I sound reverential, but this steaming, ambrosial banana flesh really is that good.
Perhaps it’s also because this method of cooking separates the liquid from the solid part of the banana, and that liquid somehow becomes rum-like. It’s akin to having a banana-infused hot toddy for breakfast and what could possibly be bad about that?
Back to that banana-punctuated life journey and I’m reminded of the simple but delicious banana bread that gets baked for the husband almost every birthday, adorned with candles (and sometimes icing and sprinkles if the children feel especially creative) and with gifts and birthday cards for a backdrop. It’s his favourite, alongside lemon drizzle, so I capitalise to use up the very brown bananas I’ve inevitably frozen over the months.
Yes, bananas freeze extremely well, which really helps avoid waste when you don’t have time to make baked goods there and then or aren’t in the mood for a smoothie.
Make sure, though, that if you’re freezing them mashed up, you write on your zip-lock bag how many bananas are in it, in case it’s helpful when it comes to following a recipe.
There’s also the scrumptious and perfectly sliced banoffee pie we ordered almost every day from this fabulous patisserie on our very first skiing trip together, some 20 years ago, now.
That was our kind of après-ski indulgence – more restorative and satisfying than the alcoholic variety, and so delicious that it has never been forgotten.
Perhaps my fondest banana memory, though, is the banana muffins I made with a caramel-cream cheese topping not long after our first child was born. It was a tricky time for me, because becoming a mum had a huge impact on my sense of identity and my anxiety levels, and I recall the very day I chose to make those muffins.
My son would have been about four months old and, until that point, the idea of baking seemed laughable, given I could barely find time to brush my hair.
I came across a banana muffin recipe in a magazine, no doubt performing the one-handed page-turn because my other hand will have been jiggling the babybouncer in an attempt to hush its occupier.
I remember feeling empowered, like celestial light was beaming down on me, telling me I should rise up and go unto the kitchen. I WOULD bake again.
And so it was that I did. There is a video from later that same day of the baby on his playmat, kicking his legs and trying to roll over while his dad and I each gobbled down one of those very muffins, narrating the proceedings through great mouthfuls from behind the camera.
I’m not sure we cared too much if he rolled or not, they were so tasty.
