Sunday, 19 September 2010 12:34 Aaron Salvo

While watching an episode of Top Chef Washington DC, I stood up and cheered for Pastry Chef Johnny Iuzzini. He was judging that week’s Quick Fire Challenge in which these best-of-the-best chefs had to make a pie.

I watched in frustration as the chefs turned into quivering masses. At one point a contestant, who was clearly out of her element, told Chef Iuzzini that she wasn’t a pastry chef. His response: “neither is my grandmother, but she can still bake a pie.”

I jumped up out of my seat and probably got more excited than was necessary. I was excited because he didn’t let her excuse slide. He got it across to her that baking isn’t some black-art: it’s cooking. All cooking started with our mothers, fathers, and grandparents providing for their families, it’s as simple as that.

Cooking, despite what the folks on Food Network would want you to believe, is not glamorous. Cooking is utilitarian-- even restaurant cooking, or maybe more appropriate especially restaurant cooking.

In the bakeshop this is evident anytime the restaurant hosts a brunch or breakfast. The pastry chef goes from fancy plated desserts with a zillion components to…gasp…muffins or biscuits or even banana bread, but these things are just as important as the plated dessert.

I love banana bread; it’s a simple thing to make and it proves a point, there is room for being a chef in baking. This is utility baking, an opportunity to forget about the recipe and just cook. Just about any recipe out there will work for banana bread, it’s very forgiving and flexible. You just need bananas and the more overripe the better. You can even take bits of banana that may have been used for other things and freeze them until you’ve accumulated enough to make the bread.

You thaw them overnight and in the morning you have a very unappealing looking container of banana mush-- the smell, however, is great, that is if you like the aroma of banana. From there it’s up to you how to doll the bread up. I like monkey with the type of fat. So instead of cooking oil, I might use brown butter or rendered bacon fat. Sometimes it’s a spiced cake with ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Sometimes I’ll use brown sugar instead of white. Banana bread is one of those things that wants to be played with.

Even after it’s baked you can still do more. A nicely toasted slice of banana bread topped with bananas foster and vanilla ice cream will make a nice dessert. Cut the loaf into cubes and dry them in a low oven then mix with a custard and do a banana bread pudding.

Or just enjoy a slice with your morning coffee.

So go ahead find a recipe and play. Use up those bananas that turned brown a lot sooner than expected or do like I do I have a daughter who likes bananas. I’ll give her a half at a time. If she doesn’t want the other half it goes in the freezer then boom: banana bread. There’s no recipe this time around, because I really can’t improve on what is already out there—even, gasp, the Better Homes and Garden Cookbook has a great recipe.

Aaron Salvo is a trained pastry chef. You can read more of his work at his blog http://sugarcoated.typepad.com/