Going Bananas

Boiled green bananas. Fried green bananas. Mashed green bananas. Baked green bananas. Barbequed green bananas. Grilled green bananas. Chipped green bananas. Grated green bananas. Dried green bananas. Then, when they ripen, there are a million other ways to prepare the humble banana. And we haven’t even started on the vast varieties of bananas available; such as bromiches, dominiques, garrabanetes, chilenas, moradas. After years of rampant banana consumption, I could write a whole book about how to prepare, cook and eat bananas. I’d call it Going Bananas! Seriously.

Some days, I feel like a monkey. Or maybe I’m descended from monkeys . . . (Sorry, Dad!) Actually they say humans are descended from monkeys. But what monkey ever completely stripped his natural habitat of perfectly sustainable resources then raided and destroyed the habitats of others to fill the resulting deficit? If I were a monkey I’d be ashamed of the connection, and very afraid of the impending disaster; a starving planet. In response, I shy away from this global crisis to live in my own self-sustainable world where the monkey business of feeding myself is much simpler. And where bananas play a major role in my diet.

So far today I’ve eaten fourteen bananas. As soon as I get up, I eat two ripe bananas then have three boiled green bananas for breakfast, with a boiled egg and a sliced tomato. At lunch; a glass of juice made with a ripe banana blended with a passionfruit. Today, there are two green bananas in the lentil soup and another two fried to make banana chips to go with the grilled fish. Fish and chips – Mompiche style. Two ripe bananas dipped in home-made granola (which also includes dried bananas) with a drizzle of organic raw honey become a tasty mid-afternoon snack. For dinner I double-fry two green bananas for the patacones; the traditional accompaniment for delicious shrimp ceviche. Now I’m considering what to have for dessert. And the branch of ripening bananas hanging from its hook in the kitchen never fails to tempt me.

My record for one day is twenty-eight bananas. That’s a one-off. Craving something sweet that I can eat without suffering any allergic reactions, I make a banana pie with twenty-five mashed ripe bananas, a splash of sunflower oil, a sprinkle of crushed star of anise, a handful of chopped raisins and some plantain flour – three green bananas grated and dried.

This is how plantain flour is made . . .

Bake it for an hour and leave it overnight to get cold. The pie is so good, I eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and have a few more slices between meals for snacks. By bedtime, the whole pie is gone. Big mistake. The night’s sultry air is filled with rich banana farts; round and bubbly, sonorous and pungent, true panty-flappers. The following day, I’m terrified to fart, sneeze, cough or giggle in case I poop my pants. After that rather humbling experience, I limit banana consumption to less than fifteen per day. Well, most days . . .

One day I’m eating muchin at Doña Sara’s house when her brother Fernando shows up.

“Marry me,” he says. “I’ll make you happy.”

“You’ll make me happy if you bring me bananas,” I laugh.

It’s the beginning of a beautiful marriage; a monkey and her bananas. Every week, I buy a branch of bananas from Fernando, gently turning down his proposal each time.

There are usually around one hundred and fifty small bananas on a branch. Each one is about the length of my hand. They grow wild in the jungle, so they’re organic and taste like real bananas. Fernando brings them in on horseback from his farm in the hills and I buy one branch a week for a dollar.

Heaving the branch over my shoulder, I carry them home and hang them from the rafters, tying a string around the top of the branch to hold it in place. The small organic bananas are still green at that point but, after being covered with a nylon rice sack to protect them from birds and fruit bats, they gradually ripen over the week. They’re eaten green and also as they become yellow. Bananas are my favorite fast-food; grab one, peel and eat. Sometimes I dip ripe bananas in crushed Manabi peanuts, or take alternate bites with a chunk of one-hundred percent dark organic chocolate. Bliss! Clearly I’m not suffering a lack of potassium . . .

One time, I make the mistake of buying a whole branch of ripe bananas. Insanity! I insist on having bananas. He says there are only ripe bananas.

“Okay. Give me ripe bananas. I can’t live without bananas.”

I laugh out loud now at the memory; the look on Fernando’s face, his head shaking as he watches me carry the branch down the street, ripe bananas dropping onto the road and a trail of local kids running around behind me picking them up, laughing and squealing with delight each time another banana hits the deck. There are maybe thirty bananas left on the branch by the time I finally get it home. Fernando must think I’m mad.

That mistake is never repeated. The next time I get ripe bananas – only because Fernando won’t have any green ones until he finds his missing horse – he gives me a hand of twelve that barely make the trip home in one piece. The skins split, the insides mash. The next day they are so ripe I use most of them to make banana bread (without walnuts, in honor of my sister who hates them!) with Doña Elsa’s home-made butter, Fabiola’s organic eggs and plantain flour. (See the recipe in Going Bananas! Haha!)

Sometimes, Miguel Saldarriaga, one of my English students, brings me moradas (purple bananas) and bromiches (small bananas) from his farm, along with a bounty of other treasures from his organic garden; green peppers, grapefruits, sweetsops, soursops, avocados, watermelons, pumpkin seeds and hava beans.

Bananas are a staple food in Mompiche; as essential as rice in Asia or bread in the Middle East. A local farmer’s breakfast consists of three or four boiled or barbecued green bananas, a large chunk of fresh farm cheese and several mugs of strong black coffee. Every weekday Fernando mounts his horse and takes his machete and heads for the plantation in the hills to search for bananas. He’ll bring back five or six branches at a time; a few for sale, and some for the family. Every week, he brings several branches of chilenas (small sweet lady-finger bananas) for Doña Sara to make her muchin; a typical coastal dessert baked in bijao leaves over hot coals. Melted farm cheese on the inside with a hint of anise, it’s divine! Sara sells muchin every weekend to passersby.

That’s how I meet Sara. My interest in traditional cuisine leads me straight to her house to try muchin.

At fifty cents a pop, I always buy two. Sitting at the enormous wooden table on her balcony, I eat one straight away, then bring the other one home for dessert after dinner. It’s so good, it usually doesn’t last the whole afternoon before it’s gone. There are other women in Mompiche who make and sell muchin, but none is as good as Sara’s. Jasmin puts grated coconut in hers, La Viejita adds way too much flour and it comes out like hard cake, and Bertha uses ripe plantains instead of chilenas – it’s just not the same!

It takes almost a year to wheedle the recipe out of Sara. I sit at her table, close my eyes and smell the muchin as I slowly unwrap it from the leaf. Then I taste it. Roll it around in my mouth, savoring the flavors.

“It has anise in it,” I state one day, watching her closely.

The trace of a smile on Sara’s lips tells me I’m right. Chilenas, butter, anise, cinnamon, farm cheese . . . what else? Bit by bit, the secret of muchin unfolds.

One day, I wake at dawn and hike up the road in gumboots, my machete resting on my shoulder, to collect bijao leaves from the hills and then spend the entire morning mashing and grating three varieties of bananas to prepare muchin; chilenas, bromiches and dominiques. I season it with anise and added a little nutmeg; my favorite spice.

In the afternoon I present Sara with muchin baked over the coal fire at home. She is impressed. Even the bijao leaves are folded correctly. Small pieces are cut off and passed around for everyone to sample. Melted cheese drips from the center.

“It’s pretty good,” compliments Ruth, Sara’s youngest daughter.

“My mother used to make it just like this, with green plantain bananas instead of wheat flour,” Sara whispers, revealing yet another well-kept secret about her muchin.

In time I also learn that Sara’s mother used lard instead of butter.

Sorry . . . I can’t resist the branch of bananas any longer. I have to have dessert before I can write any more; two ripe bananas, sliced, with a sprinkle of peanuts and a dizzle of raw jungle honey. Oh yeah! Okay, where was I?

When I first move to Mompiche, the daily hunt for bananas is a challenge. It seems there are never any bananas. If I get lucky, I can buy five bananas for twenty-five cents from Margarita’s, a seafood restaurant on the main street. Sometimes Mayor has a branch and sells me a few. The juice kiosks sometimes sell them too. Chapilillo, Mompiche’s version of Don Quixote, frequently promises me a branch of bananas but never delivers. The Friday fruit lady says she’ll bring bananas whenever she can but doesn’t.

“For goodness sake!” I bemoan, “I’m living in Ecuador, a major global exporter of bananas; the country that produces more bananas per capita than any other country in the world, and some days I can’t find a banana to save my life!”

Dole Inc. grows and exports its perfectly yellow, perfectly straight, sized-to-order, tasteless bananas to half the world; perfectly pesticided and fertilized with any number of unpronounceable toxic chemicals. But I can’t even find one of those to eat!

Fortunately, my luck changes after Fernando’s proposal.

One afternoon, I’m walking home with a heavy branch of bananas when I stop to chat with Doña Sara and rest for a few minutes outside her house. Putting the branch down, I lean it up against the fence and let Sara tease me once again about not having a man around to carry my bananas and keep me warm during the recent spate of chilly nights. As she chides me for being unacceptably single, recounting all the practical reasons I need a boyfriend, I feel something tickle my leg. Looking down, I watch a large brown spider crawl out from the middle of the bananas and run down my bare calf and across my flip-flopped foot. Every hair on my body stands on end. My skin shudders. My face pales. I’d had that branch on my shoulder.

“Oh,” Sara warns, watching the spider retreat under the fence line, “you have to be careful of banana spiders. They give a very nasty bite.”

Good to know! I smack one end of the branch on the ground sharply before hefting it back onto my shoulder for the rest of the walk home.