Fruit
Banana
Also called ripe banana, Cavendish
The yellow dessert banana — usually Cavendish — not a plantain, not a cooking banana you fry as a savoury, and not dried banana chips. Breakfast, batter and açaí bowls use the ripe fruit. Green is starchy; spotted is perfume; black is for banana bread, not a bowl.
Origin
Southeast Asian domestication, then a global export clone. Almost every supermarket banana is the same sterile Cavendish line. Other varieties exist and taste better; you will rarely be sold them.
Flavour
Sweet, tropical, creamy. Green bananas taste of starch and catch in the throat. Very ripe fruit is louder, sweeter, and collapses into mash without a fight.
How to use it
Slice onto an açaí bowl when the skin is yellow with a few spots. Mash into batter when it is softer; the starch has become sugar and the fruit will sweeten without extra work. Green bananas do not belong in a sweet bowl — they are a different ingredient, closer to a plantain. Do not refrigerate a green banana hoping it will ripen; it will stall and the skin will brown. A squeeze of citrus on slices slows the grey for a short sitting, not for tomorrow's lunchbox.
Storage
Counter, apart from other fruit if you want them to last, in a bunch with apples if you want them faster. Fridge browns the skin and slows the flesh once they are already ripe. Freeze peeled bananas for smoothie mash, not for pretty slices.
Recipes using it
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