Friday, February 20, 2015

Banana Recipe Contest: You call these gluten-free paleo things pancakes?

Today on A Book of Cookrye, we present the first entry in the banana recipe contest! This one comes from Freezair who sent it with this lovely note:

This is a recipe I heard through a friend of a friend who was on... some diet or another. Paleo? Gluten free? It sound slightly terrifying to me. It's the simplest recipe in the world, so it was easy to spread by word of mouth, but I just can't picture how these would look or taste! I know cooking straight-up banana isn't terribly uncommon. Fried bananas are a thing, right? But this seems to me like it'd be verging on a banana omelette, or even, like, fried baby food... especially with no flour or sugar or anything to cut the eggs with. I'm slightly horrified. But on the other hand, I do loves me some bananas, so maybe it's actually good? I'm too scared to try it myself. So I pass it off on a more adventurous chef!

A Book of Cookrye has featured two recipes from other people. The first one was from a recipe swap and we kind of brought that one on ourselves (however, it was the most entertaining and memorable thing we've ever made). The second one was gingerbread shoe leather. The third, viz. this one, has such a sterling recommendation that I simply had to make it.
Banana Pancakes
1 mushy banana
2 eggs

Blend ingredients together until REALLY well mixed. (You may even want to use a blender.) Pour mixture over hot, buttered griddle. Cook until done.

We at A Book of Cookrye have always been leery of gluten-free versions of things that should be gluten-full. Furthermore, everything on the paleo diet seems to be punitively healthy. That said, bananas are indeed tasty so this might not be so bad. If nothing else, there's still an abandoned blender in the kitchen so this will be over with soon.
Getting down to business, the beginning of gluten-free paleo "pancakes" looks like someone is about to put a couple of scoops of protein powder in it and drink the resulting slurry. (Side note: I don't know how the protein-shake industry convinced so many that you can't do any workouts whatsoever without a massive jar of protein powder and would love to be informed how that came to be.)
If this is juicing, bring me some fried chicken.

Fortunately, there is but a small amount of banana egg stuff. I... okay, seriously people? This is what your diets drive you to? Couldn't you just scramble some eggs and eat a banana? Why do you have to put everything in a blender? Do these diets leave you so weakened you have to outsource chewing?
Okay, technically it doesn't look bad. It just feels like it'll inevitably taste terrible.

If nothing else, at least I didn't waste much time or effort on these. Also, holy crap, it actually looks like a decent pancake!

I guess using a blender also whipped enough air into it to make the pancakes fluffy and everything. However, if you can't turn an omelet, you can't turn this either. They tear ridiculously easily. Yet, oddly enough, the smelled really good. This is most confusing...

All right, if they ain't pancakes, they're as close as they're going to get.

As for how they taste? Odd, bland, and disappointing. Hot mashed bananas always taste terrible, and adding eggs did it no favors. They were a little sweet, but in a way that was oddly wrong. Also, the texture was like whipped rubber.
But! I have good news! You see, I use a communal kitchen and someone else was making her lunch. She tried a banana "pancake" and said it tasted like it would be really good to dip bread in. Furthermore, someone had abandoned a loaf of now-stale bread in the refrigerator.

This is the best French toast ever. You owe it to yourself to try this.

We at A Book of Cookrye fully expected to find this utterly dreadful and write a post about how much we nearly choked in the name of culinary masochism. Instead, we had an unexpected yet amazing surprise. Everything that's wrong about this recipe makes it perfect French toast batter. So thank you, Freezair!

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If you have any banana recipes, feel free to send them to abookofcookrye@gmail.com  for the dreadfully named Bananas About Bananas Recipe Contest! You could win this:





The contest deadline is February 28!

2 comments:

  1. Oh man, I can't believe you actually made these! And... you knocked it out of the park! I was cracking up in public as I read this. Madame, you are a braver girl than I!

    I don't know what it says about this recipe that, in order to make it edible, you basically have to break every tenant of the diets that inspired it....!

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  2. Thank you! I'm so glad to have inadvertently been introduced to banana French toast!
    I don't know what it says about the recipe either, but I think it says a lot about making your diet too time-consuming.

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