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Banana Pudding

While driving down to Alabama in February, every down-home restaurant and barbecue joint we went to had banana pudding. It should be vanilla custard layered with vanilla wafers and sliced bananas, all topped with plenty of whipped cream (or sometimes meringue), but most of them were not great because they were clearly made with packaged vanilla pudding mix and sometimes non-dairy whipped topping instead of real cream.

For a great recipe, I turned to my friend Jean Anderson’s last cookbook, “A Love Affair with Southern Cooking,” which won a Beard award last year. Jean’s books – and I have every one of them – are invaluable not just for their recipes, which are admirably succinct and precise, not to mention delicious, but for their history, folklore, and plain old facts. “A Love Affair with Southern Cooking,” for instance, has a timeline of important culinary developments, events and notable people running down the sides of the pages.  Plus there are short essay sidebars and informative headnotes. There may not be any pictures in “A Love Affair …” but the 434-page book is a truly great read and is packed with unbelievably good recipes. Since I returned from the south, I’ve been cooking from it. Her family’s version of Country Captain, the curried chicken dish, is my next challenge – not that it’s difficult. I’ve been needing a change of pace from my usual Southern Italian and Yiddish repertoire.

Here’s Jean’s Banana Pudding, based on a custard – a pastry cream -- that you would happily eat for its own sake without the bananas and vanilla wafers. For my Italian ladies, I called it Zuppa di Banana, making the connection between it and the Southern Italian dessert, Zuppa Inglese, which is based on the English trifle. Zuppa can be translated as “sop,” and although most zuppe (plural) are soups or brothy stews poured over bread to sop up their liquid, a dessert where cake replaces bread can also be called a zuppa. In fact, although Jean specifies a 9-inch square cake pan, I used a glass trifle bowl to great effect. If you are entertaining  it's a great dessert for a crowd. Or just the family. It holds up well in the refrigerator for at least a couple of days.

Enjoy,
Ya’ all


JEAN ANDERSON’S BANANA PUDDING
Serves at least 10

3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup unsifted all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 quart (whole) milk
1 cup half and half
3 large eggs, lightly beaten together
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
About 75 vanilla wafers (about 3/4 of a 12-ounce box)
6 medium firm-ripe bananas (about 2 1/4 pounds)

Plus:
1 cup heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks with
2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine the sugar, flour and salt in a large, heavy saucepan.

Whisk in the milk and half and half, then set over moderate heat, and cook, stirring constantly, for 7 to 8 minutes, or until the mixture simmers, is thickened and smooth. Remove from the heat.

Whisk a few spoonfuls of the hot mixture into the beaten eggs, then pour the heated eggs into the saucepan with the remaining hot mixture. An instant read thermometer should read 160 degrees. If not, place the pudding over medium heat for another minute or so, stirring constantly. Do not let it boil. It will curdle. Stir in the vanilla.

Assemble the pudding while the custard is still hot.

Skim coat a 9 by 9 by 2-inch baking dish or a glass dish with similar volume, such as a trifle bowl, with about 1/2 cup the hot custard. “Pave” with about 25 of the vanilla wafers, arranging the cookies side by side.

Peel the bananas and slice about 1/4-inch thick. Add a layer of about a third of the slices over the cookies, again arranging them side by side.

Spread with a third of the remaining pudding. Add another layer of cookies, then bananas, then half the remaining custard. Spread with a final layer of cookies, bananas, and the remaining pudding.

Cover the dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate for several hours, until the custard is well-chilled, or overnight.

To serve, whip the cream with the confectioners’ sugar and remaining vanilla until it holds soft peaks. Spoon the whipped cream on top of the pudding and serve.

Leftovers hold well in the refrigerator for 1 day.