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Every year during the holiday season I go to my friend Heather's house for her annual Hannukah Pot-Latke party. I don't think Heather is actually Jewish but her roommates are and they have a celebration 'in honor of the night before the first night of the Festival of Lights.' Jewish? Half-Jewish? Curious? We are all invited. Menorahs are lit, songs are sung (as you can imagine many of us non-jews struggle with this part), and of course there is the food.

People bring everything from latkes, salads, applesauce, kugel, and Krispy Kremes, to dips, chips, and finger foods -- plus plenty to drink. It is quite a spread with many traditional Jewish foods representing, and a solid dose of random other culinary contributions. You are probably expecting me to write about the tasty sweet potato latkes or the creamy, sweet, delicious kugel, right? Not this time. Two years ago someone brought a couple loaves of chocolate chip banana bread. It was the most memorable sweet I tasted all year.

I of course then proceeded to track down the guy who brought the banana bread, and begged him to rattle off the recipe. I have superhuman memory when it comes to remembering recipes as long as it is under 6 ingredients -- his recipe had 10+ and I never had a chance. He said it was a favorite recipe he had learned from one of his teachers, but it was clear he wasn't going to write it down for me.

I've been meaning to make a loaf of chocolate chip banana bread ever since. The opportunity hit me as I was looking through Art Smith's Back to the Table. Art Smith is chef to the rich and famous, but that isn't at all why I picked up his book. I was intrigued by the theme of his book -- the reunion of food and family. He also brings a nice Southern bent to his recipes (he grew up in the South). The photography is natural and beautiful, and I loved that Art was beaming from ear to ear in just about every picture.

His Banana-Chocolate Chip Cake recipe had just six ingredients (bless him); sugar, butter, flour, eggs, chocolate chips, and ripe bananas. Most people have five of the six of these in their kitchen on an average day. I picked up a bunch of bananas early in the week and waited for them to get nice and ripe. The batter came together like a charm, it took me longer to flour my pans than to mix the ingredients. Super easy. Instead of one big bundt cake, I divided the batter between a couple vintage mini loaf pans and some cute heart shaped tins I picked up at the flea market. It was Valentine's Day after all.

The cake was rich and delicious and extremely banana flavored. I think next time I will let my bananas go even riper, they weren't _quite_ mushy and dark enough, that's when you get the real depth of color and flavor -- I was just a hair too impatient this time. My chips also sort of sank down to the bottom a bit (see picture), so maybe next time I will sprinkle some on top so they have a farther trip to the bottom of the pan. The other great thing about this bread is that is doesn't dry out and if you cover it with plastic wrap it will keep for DAYS, no joke -- it stays moist and really tasty. A great recipe to bake ahead for a brunch, I look forward to cooking a more recipes from Back to the Table in the near future.

In some of the early entries on this site I didn't request permission to run the recipe I was writing about from the publisher so it won't appear here. The majority of entries on 101 Cookbooks will have the recipes attached, this just happens to be one of the ones that doesn't.

From: Back to the Table Page: 218

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