This simple Banana Pecan Bread is perfect for baking—and sharing—on a chilly fall weekend. Recipe below.
This bread wasn’t meant to be featured here. We just had some bananas on their way to becoming a science experiment. I’d planned to make my Mango Banana Bread, but balked at spending $1.99 for a mango at the supermarket. At the Mexican produce market in our neighborhood, where we usually find better prices, they’re currently $2.49! So I decided a simple banana bread with pecans would be good. And that got me thinking how good is somehow not good enough these days.
What started this thought process was my search for some basic banana bread recipes, just to get proportions and timing right. The search term “banana bread recipe” yielded impressive results: “the best banana bread recipe,” “ultimate banana bread,” “favorite banana bread” and, from the UK, where food must apparently also be smart, “brilliant banana loaf.”
I see this trend everywhere—in email subject lines, on magazine covers, in TV promos. Promises of the best fried chicken, the ultimate kitchen makeover, the top 100 (or 10 or 20 or, randomly, 37) whatevers. Everything vying to be a mind-blowing, life-changing experience. This is what drives the current plague of competitive cooking shows on food television. Contestants know they have one or two bites at most to dazzle judges, so instead of mastering subtle, nuanced flavor notes, they create over-the-top fat/salt/heat/spice bombs.
Small plates are another example of this phenomenon. I’ll start by saying we enjoy small plates on occasion, but their ubiquity on menus speaks of our taste buds’ growing ADD tendencies. Dinner can’t just be good food, well prepared and shared with friends. It has to entertain us, put on a show.
But in our collective push for the best or the ultimate, the simple pleasures of good somehow have gotten left behind. There’s a little bistro in Chicago, La Crêperie, that has been serving up crêpes, steak frites, salade Niçoise and other French favorites since 1972. The food is never stellar, but it is always reliably good. The atmosphere is unfailingly charming—boisterous, welcoming and thoroughly French. Over the years, we have had many memorable meals there. Good meals.
This urge isn’t confined to food. Our friend Ronnie lives in Brooklyn Heights. Her voice is part of a mighty chorus singing the praises of the renovated Brooklyn Bridge Park. And it does sound spectacular. On the other hand, there’s another park near Ronnie’s apartment that she also loves, Cadman Plaza Park. Here’s what she says about it: “I love that park. You can watch kids and adults playing soccer. There are benches nearby. The trees and paths are just enough to create a park feel, but nothing plasticized; mostly a quiet(ish) retreat despite the proximity to courthouses and a main road. Someone wrote an editorial the other day saying we need to bring in vendors and more seating and more this and that to make it look more like Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is carefully planned and manicured and filled with vendors and stuff. So much of the city is about filling in the spaces and making it more. But Cadman Plaza Park, as is, has soul. You can feel it in the faces of the people on the benches and the folks of all ages playing soccer and laughing. And yet someone wants to fix it.” Again, good isn’t good enough.
This banana bread recipe isn’t the best or the ultimate. It certainly isn’t brilliant. But it is good. You will be happy to make it and share it, I think. This past Sunday, a chilly Chicago day, I was happy to be in the kitchen making it, with the Art Farmer Quintet’s Blame It On My Youth
Banana Pecan Bread
Serves 10 to 12
2 or 3 very ripe bananas
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup melted unsalted butter
1/4 cup canola or vegetable oil, plus extra for greasing baking dish
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup sugar
1-1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped pecans (or other nuts or no nuts—your call)
Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Mash the bananas in a large bowl. Add the eggs, butter, 1/4 cup oil, vanilla and sugar. Stir to combine thoroughly.
In a separate large bowl, mix flour, baking soda and salt. Add banana mixture to flour, stirring to combine. A silicone spatula does a great job. Fold in the chopped nuts.
Grease a 5×9-inch glass baking dish with a little oil. Pour the batter into the baking dish and bake in center of the oven until a wooden pick inserted in the middle of the bread comes out clean, about 1 hour (check at 50 minutes—ovens vary).
Cool for 15 minutes on a wire rack, then work around the outside edges of the bread with a thin, flexible metal baking spatula and turn the bread out onto the rack to cool completely. Serve at room temperature. Or, if you’re impatient as we were, cut into it while it’s still warm.
Superb commentary. And I’m guilty of sometimes using “best” or “ultimate” or “perfect” or whatever in my recipe titles. We all do seem to be driven by the notion that more is better, don’t we? Which is odd in my case, because although I sometimes enjoy fancy, over-the-top restaurants where the food really is brilliant, my usual restaurant preference is comfortable and good. I enjoy being wowed, but a place that has competent staff, uses good ingredients, and knows what to do with them is good enough for me. And if I’m honest, it’s what I really like. And speaking of like, this looks like a brilliant banana bread! 🙂
Excellent piece Terry. My absolute extreme favorite is simple banana bread with pecans.
John, I also use best, perfect and other terms on occasion, I’ll admit. It’s part of the SEO game Google has taught us all to play, to boost our rankings in search engines. Your dining experiences remind me of a dinner Marion and I had in one of Chicago’s top restaurants, very fancy, very formal. On our way back to the car, we passed a bistro that perfectly nails Paris, both in setting and in the food, much less haute than where we’d dined. I remember thinking that I wished we had eaten there instead. And thanks for the “brilliant” comment!
Thanks, Susie!
I love your little “rants” ~ always so thought-provoking. I blame advertising for starting the whole comparison “great” “better” “best” with television enabling a wider audience reach. And we can blame or credit Martha Stewart for the need to reach perfection in the kitchen and crafts and homemaking. But, really, the internet just blew the top off everything, didn’t it? Now there’s Pinterest telling us we MUST do it all and do it all perfectly! (I will admit to a guilty pleasure when it comes to pinning but I doubt it’s your kind of place.)
My favorite foods are still the “plain” home-cooked fare that I was raised on, much of which you won’t find in any restaurant. We always had walnuts in our banana bread, but I’ve been using pecans ever since I became an adult and I love the combination. I also love when you bake!
Hope all is well with you and Marion and the girls, Terry!
Your banana/mango bread was great – I remember I had those two fruits in my bowl, in the right quantities, and they were about to go over to the dark side when the recipe appeared. I trust your banana baked goods recommendations.
As to your commentary (I think it’s too civilized to be a rant), it put me in mind of a Prairie Home Companion mug I had some years ago – a Keillor musing on winter in Minnesota, and though the gist of the whole thing is different from the premise here, the mug text ends with “Drink your coffee. It’s not the best you’ll ever get, but it’s good enough.” Indeed 🙂
Thanks, Dani! Regarding Martha Stewart, once Marion was reading a recipe in Martha Stewart Living while standing in our backyard. The recipe called for roasting something on a bed of newly mowed grass. Marion dropped the magazine in the yard and left it there to rot. She has not looked at another copy since.
Anita, I love that mug! And another tangent on my non-rant (thanks!) is people who critique their meals while eating them. Unless you’re a restaurant critic or the food is really awful, just be in the moment with your dinner companions, catch up on everyone’s lives, talk about what you’re reading, what movie you’re dying to see or even gossip about colleagues or relatives—you know, have fun.
Amen, and thanks for the recipe! I think “brilliant” is also in the eye of the beholder.