What’s the mood in your kitchen these days? Are you experimenting more? Baking bread when you never did before? Making cakes for absolutely no reason and then, obviously, eating them all while pretending you’re really just “sampling” a few bites here and there until BOOM…the cake pan is scraped clean? Maybe you’re really quite sick of cooking altogether and feeling as if life is one giant parade of dirty dishes begging to be washed. Maybe you’re somewhere in the middle: just getting by, cooking the same general things, riffing more simply out of necessity and lack of normal grocery access. Maybe you’re getting adventurous with more time at home to finally cook your way through Ina Garten’s Instagram feed—massive cocktails and all—and discovering that you can, in fact, make anything from fresh gnocchi to biscuits to a killer chocolate cake all from scratch.
I’ve been cooking more than usual: three meals a day, plus scattered baking. Highlights include all manner of cakes adapted to use my sourdough starter, including a particularly fantastic banana bread, the recipe for which follows down below. I’ve tried about 6 different banana bread recipes in the past two months, deciding my favorite is a toss-up between the aforementioned sourdough version, Smitten Kitchen’s ultimate banana bread, a vegan chocolate version, and Molly Wizenberg’s no-butter no-oil recipe.
I’ve made the best chocolate chip cookies of my life, sourdough focaccia, a series of very good improvised pantry pastas, and an everyday yogurt cake which turned out beautifully. I’ve perfected my crispy mushroom technique, become a DIY ice cream ninja (more on that soon), and mastered the ability to make avocado toast and scrambled eggs one-handed, while manhandling a baby in the other.
Have you read anything good lately? I’m most of the way through Emily Gould’s Perfect Tunes, which I like but do not love. The protagonist is one you root for, again and again, but you’re forced to watch her fumble through a series of disappointments. In real life, she’d probably be a wonderfully complex, funny person to know but in writing, this translates to a depressing focus on the mundane ways her life falls ever-so-slightly short.
That kind of real human struggle is the stuff of many great novels, so perhaps it’s the fault of the writing that leaves me feeling a little dispirited with each passing chapter.
Before that, when I had ample time to swan about reading books and painting my toenails and color-coordinating my sweaters and all the things one does when not taking care of a tiny human, I had finished a few excellent books in recent months. None of these will make my all-time favorites list, but they’re great and worth picking up if you’re looking for something: Dominicana by Angie Cruz (reminiscent of Junot Diaz), Writers and Lovers by Lily King, The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali, The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall., and City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert, the last of which was so engrossing that it might actually make the favorites list.
And music? Are you listening to it every day? Dancing to it? Singing it softly under your breath, as you change your baby’s diaper, feeling the impossibly soft skin of his chubby stomach rise and fall under your palm, touching the velvety spot just under his chin? Singing it loudly while you bike around town, like the eccentric old man I often see on walks these days? He wears a tweed blazer over a sweater with a jaunty white fedora and has affixed a small radio onto the back of his bike which blares opera as he sings along—at top volume—with gusto. (Editor’s note: It seems impossible not to be happy whilst doing that, although I have not personally given it a whirl.)
At home, I always have Pandora playing on the speakers. I rotate stations throughout the day: ARIZONA, Bob Marley, The Lumineers, Sam Cooke, and the xx are favorites. When I cook dinner, I like to put on Ina Garten’s Favorite Love Songs playlist or if I need something upbeat, I choose between the Guardians of the Galaxy station or classic country featuring “She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful” by Sammy Kershaw (a nearly perfect song, although reader, I believe she does know.)
Here’s a list of songs to listen to right now, in no particular order and with absolutely nothing in common other than…I like them:
You and I (LEON)
Run Run Run (Junge Junge)
Somebody to Love (One Republic)
Tequila-R3HAB Remix (Dan + Shay)
The Rope (Lane 8, POLICA)
Slow Down (Skip Marley)
Intentions (Justin Bieber) YES, CORRECT, JUSTIN BIEBER.
With or Without You (Cunnie Williams)
One Man Band (Old Dominion)
Some Enchanted Evening (Bob Dylan)
Drogba (Afro B)
Coolin’ Out (Nathaniel Ratliff & the Night Sweats)
I do hope you’ll put some of these on loud tonight, or soon. I’d like to picture you in your pajamas and socked feet, letting loose a la Tom Cruise in Risky Business (or try channeling Kevin Kline in this scene from In and Out).
While you’re doing that, you can picture me in my pajamas too, bustling about the kitchen although I won’t be cooking. Friday night is pizza and movie night, which means picking up the weekly special from our incredible local pizza spot. Tonight is a white pie with cherry tomatoes, Swiss chard, local dandelion greens, and Scamorza (a fresh Italian cheese similar to mozzarella but much stronger in flavor).
We’ll be watching Pretty Woman, because there are very few things not improved (at least slightly) by a young, foxy Richard Gere.
And for dessert? Banana bread, of course.
Note: This recipe calls for sourdough starter—you can either use ripe (fed) starter or discard (unfed). If you use the ripe starter, it’ll be slightly more “bread-like” with less density and moisture, and as your starter starts to fall towards unfed, it’ll make the bread more like a classic banana bread in texture. Both are excellent, so don’t worry or fuss too much over the exact state of your starter. The volume isn’t totally exact either since that’ll vary slightly depending on the hydration of your starter, so aim for 1 cup (227g) by weight and know that every time you make it, the bread might be slightly different which is FINE and GOOD and VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE. Banana bread is a workhouse of a recipe and frankly, you can’t really mess it up.
Cardamom Sourdough Banana Bread
Adapted from Simple Life by Kels; makes one 9” loaf
3/4 cup (150g) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (8 tablespoons; 113g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 very ripe bananas, mashed slightly
1 egg
1 cup (227g) sourdough starter (see note above)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups (180g) unbleached all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cardamom
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons raw sugar (or use granulated), for finishing
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9” x 5” loaf pan with parchment paper and grease well (you can skip the parchment and just grease it very well if you want).
In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes at medium-high speed.
Add the bananas and egg and beat until very well-combined.
Add the sourdough starter and vanilla and mix well.
Add the remaining ingredients, except for the extra sugar, and mix gently until just combined. Don’t overmix!
Scrape the batter into your prepared pan, sprinkle the raw sugar generously over the top, and bake for 50 to 60 minutes. Start checking around 50 minutes—take it out when a tester inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs clinging to it. Don’t overbake! It will be dry if you do.
Let the bread cool slightly in the pan then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.