Some people have a sixth sense for knowing when a fruit is perfectly ripe. My father is not one of them. When I was growing up, he used our family’s kitchen as his banana-ripening laboratory, tucking the fruits away in paper bags, finishing them in the sun near the telephone, and resting them in a drawer of the fridge. He had a system that often ended in failure (him, clicking his tongue over the compost bin and letting a forgotten, rotten banana fall dramatically) but also ended in “success” (him, beaming as he placed an almost-black banana in the freezer). My mother threatened to throw these ripening bananas away many times, insisting that her friends might mistake them for an invasion of unspeakable things, but my father was very protective of his collection.
Now, I don’t even really like bananas. I never have. But my dad’s rava halwa was really something. Part dumpling, part dessert, mostly butter, the sweet Indian snack food has many variations. When my father made it, he heated butter with cardamom and raisins, stirred in semolina and milk, almonds and a little cane sugar. Finally, those bananas he’d been gathering in the freezer. By the time the halwa pulled away from the sides of the pan, it had become a kind of soft, not-too-sweet, nutty polenta and the whole kitchen smelled of brown butter and bananas. We ate the rava halwa hot, in cereal bowls, drizzled with warm milk and clarified butter, sprinkled with a little crunchy salt.
My father called this “brain food” and woke up early to make this for me on the morning I took my SATs. It later became a tradition that he’d cook it just for me in the morning, before I took a flight out of town, meaning we could spend a whole week getting ready to say goodbye. But over the years, he cut down severely on the butter, replaced the whole milk with skim, replaced the sugar with agave, and experimented with other fruity mix-ins. Those were dark days. I stopped eating breakfast, on principle, and eventually the whole banana-ripening operation came to a halt.
The spirit of my dad’s rava halwa lives on in this recipe for old school banana halwa, an Indian sweet somewhere between a candy and a fudge. It's just a tiny bit tricky. Since the mixture is too thick for a candy thermometer, you've just got to go for it and trust yourself to know when the thing is cooked (in India, it's served spoon-soft and more candy-like, depending on who makes it, so don't worry about authenticity). No matter how you do it, the banana halwa will be intense and candy-sweet, but with an almost savory depth from the brown butter and palm sugar. And it requires, of course, a handful of perfectly ripe bananas. Sure, they’ll give off a strange, floral smell as they propel themselves towards ripeness, and those black spots will bloom slowly over their peels, and it will all be very off-putting, I know! But if my dad has taught me anything it’s about being patient—the longer you wait, the sweeter it is.
Brown Butter-Banana Toffee
4 tablespoons butter
4 ripe bananas (about 2 cups) mashed
½ cup palm sugar (or white sugar)
½ teaspoon cardamom powder
½ teaspoon salt
- Heat the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan until you see the milk solids brown into a deep nutty color. Measure and reserve 3 tablespoons of the butter and save the rest for another use. Wipe the saucepan clean.
- Put the banana in the saucepan over medium heat and simmer, stirring often, until the mixture thickens and turns a deep, toffee brown.
- At this point, add the sugar and stir continuously until the whole mixture pulls together, away from the pan, like a big shiny dumpling (another five minutes or so).
- Turn off the heat and, while still hot, whisk in the brown butter, cardamom and salt, until well mixed.
- Spread the halwa in a plastic-wrap-lined loaf tin and allow to cool down for 20 minutes at room temperature. Then unmold onto a clean, dry cutting board and slice into bite-size pieces. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week.
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