Killer Bananas

Most fruit naturally produces a gas called “ethylene” which can cause other fruit to ripen. It’s an invisible gas, but the more of it there is, the quicker your fruit will ripen. If some fruit starts producing the gas then other fruit will start producing more of it and so it goes on increasing the amount of ethylene gas until the fruit is over-ripe and needs to be thrown away. Certain fruits also produce more gas than others, and some fruits are also more susceptible to ethylene than others.

- Bananas, avocados & apples produce a lot of ethylene and are highly susceptible to the effect of it
- Kiwi fruits don’t produce a lot of ethylene, but they are highly susceptible to the effect of it

We can put this knowledge to good use and actually speed up the ripening process by putting fruit in an enclosed container. This gets around the hard avocado syndrome - you want to make a dish with them but the shops only have un-ripe avocados. The answer is to put them together with some bananas and let nature take its course. About 8 hours on a warm window sill in a paper bag should have the desired effect.

The opposite is of course that we may want to prevent fruit from ripening too quickly. In this case ensure that the area where you store your fruit is well ventilated or keep the fruit separate and this will help the fruit to stay perfectly ripe without starting to go over.

Ethylene will also affect some vegetables and can be responsible for pitting and brown spots on fine beans and lettuces, yellowing of broccoli buds and sprouts, and bitterness in carrots.

Keeping tomatoes and cucumbers together causes the cucumber to rot more quickly.

Supermarkets tend to keep bananas separate from the other fruit for this very reason. You might like to invest in a ‘Banana Tree’ for home use. This device is a way of hanging bananas to allow a good air flow, away from other fruit.



Coating in Breadcrumbs

This is an excellent technique for making food more appealing. You are adding extra colour, texture and flavour and sometimes disguising something that might not look so appealing. The process is relatively simple and the results are well worth the effort.

The basic technique requires a bowl of seasoned flour, a bowl of beaten egg and a bowl of dried breadcrumbs. The secret is to keep one hand for the egg and the other for the flour and breadcrumbs, otherwise you will be bread crumbing your hands at the same time.

Say for example we are coating rissoles. Take the first one and roll it in the flour to lightly coat the whole surface.  Next place it in the egg and with your other hand make sure that this coats all the flour. Then drop the rissole into the breadcrumbs and using your dry hand sprinkle it with the crumbs until you can pick it up without touching the eggy bits. Now roll it around until the whole surface is coated. One coating is usually enough but if the aim is for the coating to contain a liquid centre, garlic butter for example, simply repeat the whole process again.

Now that you have the basics of bread crumbing you can experiment with different flavours. Finely grated parmesan cheese in the breadcrumbs works well and you can have fun with various herbs and spices. If you are using something aromatic like lemon zest it is best to add it to the flour so that it isn’t lost in the cooking process.

You can also replace the breadcrumbs with cereals like crushed cornflakes or rice crispies but these need to be oven baked rather than fried. Other alternatives are crushed savoury biscuits or oatmeal.