I LOVE... USING IT ALL

Matt Preston’s quest to find the best use for banana peels has finally come to a conclusion.

I’M IN TROUBLE. It’s fully chilly weather round the kitchen bench, complete with some gale-force sighs of disapproval. You see, I froze the elderly, blackening bananas without peeling them first – and this is not acceptable in our house.

I know it is a pain if you want to blitz the frozen banana to make vegan ice cream or whiz it with frozen mango to make a fluffy slushie that’s perfect drizzled with rum and lime. But, in my defence – and rest assured I wasn’t mounting one lest I got pinioned by an icy stare like a butterfly in a Edwardian lepidopterist’s collection – 98 percent of the time those bananas are going to become banana bread and you have to thaw them for that anyway.

I bring up bananas because banana bread is the food-waste minimising tip most often cited in issues such as this one. Now, while we can be smug about using the flesh, no one discusses the peel, which cavalierly hits the bin as we congratulate ourselves on saving the flesh from the same fate.

For a few years, I’ve been trying to solve the problem of how to save banana peels from the compost. It all started as a chat with chef Massimo Bottura in 2019. For his Refettorio charity lunch and waste-minimisation project in Milan, he had been baking banana peel under slices of pancetta to make it “bacony”, or “stranamente vicino alla pancetta ma non” (‘oddly close to bacon, but not’).

Inspired by this and my food team’s work on ‘carrot bacon’, I scraped and fried the peels, then baked them loaded with spices and maple syrup. It was a hassle but a tastier, more convincing fake.

I posted a ‘How To’ video in April 2019 but by June I was over peel bacon. Even when banana peel bacon went viral on TikTok in 2021, I still knew there must be a better way to use the peels.

The light dawned when I opened Nigella Lawson’s new cookbook and found her banana skin curry. Sure, she got a wee bit lambasted for it but those trolls probably don’t even eat left-overs!

She wasn’t the first. The Great British Bake Off winner, Nadiya Hussain, got media heat for using banana skins in a dry South Indian curry and as vegan pulled pork back in 2019. Hussein’s parents are from Bangladesh and while there’s no record if that’s where her inspiration came from, dry banana skin curry has had a place on the subcontinent for a while. Cook Mamta Gupta also makes a dry curry, kacche kele ke chilke ki sabji, taught to her by her dad, using green banana skins.

So I suspect that a banana skin curry might just be the best way to use those banana skins that would usually just be binned… here’s mine, made with brinjal (eggplant).

BRINJAL & BANANA SKIN CURRY

SERVES 4-6

3 banana peels (if you are not using immediately just toss in the salt and turmeric and leave them in water for later)

1 tbs ground turmeric

1 tbs garam masala

140ml vegetable oil or coconut oil

3 medium eggplants (about 950g total), cut into 4cm chunks 1 onion, grated

5cm piece (25g) ginger, peeled and grated

3 garlic cloves, grated

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 bunch coriander, stems and leaves separated

3 long green chillies, seeds and membrane removed, sliced into

2cm rounds, plus 1 extra, finely sliced

1 tbs kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves, optional)

3 ripe truss tomatoes, grated

270ml can coconut cream

1 cup (120g) frozen tuvar lilva (green pigeon peas), or peas

1/2 cup (75g) toasted cashews

2 tsp mustard seeds

2 sprigs of curry leaves

Steamed basmati rice (cooked with 5 cardamom pods), to serve

Preheat oven to 200°C. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

Trim the tough stem and tip off each banana peel and cut into 3cm lengths. Mix 1/2 tsp salt flakes and 2 tsp turmeric and sprinkle over the peel. Toss to coat, then barely cover with cold water and set aside until required.

In a large bowl combine 1 tsp turmeric, 2 tsp garam masala,

1/3 cup (80ml) oil and 1/2 tsp salt flakes. Add eggplant and toss to coat, then arrange on prepared tray and roast for 20 minutes or until a little charred but not collapsed.

Meanwhile, heat 40ml oil in a large frypan over medium heat and cook onion for 8-9 minutes until fragrant. Add ginger and garlic. Cook gently for 20 minutes or until everything colours. Drain and pat dry the banana peel.

Scrape onion mixture to one side of the pan. Pour 20ml oil onto the other side and heat to a sizzle. Fry banana peel for 2 minutes, then stir in the cumin and remaining turmeric. Cook for 1 minute. Add coriander stems, sliced chillli and kasuri methi, if using. Cook for 2 minutes, then add the tomato. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes. Add eggplant and most of the coconut cream, the remaining garam masala and the frozen pigeon peas. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for 5 minutes.

Transfer curry to a serving bowl. Swirl in the remaining coconut cream and top with extra chilli and a few coriander leaves.

Place remaining 20ml oil and cashews in a frypan over medium heat. When sizzling, add mustard seeds and, when they start popping, add the curry leaves. Toss to colour the leaves, then immediately pour over the curry. (Don’t let the mustard seeds burn as this makes them too bitter.) Serve with basmati rice and remaining coriander leaves.