curry banana with rice and vegetables

So, I went to Savory yesterday and now I have a whole bunch of new spices I want to try. And I have these bananas that traditionally go black before I ever get around to eating them, especially when I already have a metric ton of fruit salad in the refrigerator that must be eaten before it all turns soft, and so I go, "Hey! Why not make a curry banana?" Doesn't that sound fantastic? And by fantastic, I mean stupid. No wait, I meant to say, by fantastic I mean fantasy-like. I also have a bunch of specific chile pepper powder that I want to start using on things. But mostly, I want to compare Savory's habanero powder with the powder from the habaneros I grew myself. I'm almost out of all the powder I made myself, if you can believe a guy used nearly two whole ounces of habanero powder in the span of a single year. That's in addition to all the other forms of chiles, canned, fresh, flakes, paprika of various tones, and a whole slew of sauces, mostly Mexican but also Asian and American-made. Anyway, to compress the story, I put habanero powder in with the Madras curry.

Note to self: reduce 1/4 teaspoon habanero powder to 1/1,000,0000 teaspoon.

That stuff is HOT! Ew, Lordy, made my face sweat.

An exceedingly basic sauce is formed with equal parts butter and flour with milk added slowly to thicken. Stop adding milk when desired thickness is achieved. Make it a little thinner than you expect because it'll continue to thicken as it cools. In this case I used bacon grease because I just fried bacon for the rice, so why bother with butter when I already have all that super duper wonderful bacon grease? A quarter cup of diced onion is included with the roux. That oil and flour is called a roux. Chile powder and curry powder and salt are also included with the roux. It all forms a hot sizzling paste into which milk is added carefully while stirring. It all happens so quickly, you mustn't turn your back on this or you'll lose control.

In another pot the rice is cooking by the usual technique, except this time the rice was fried in oil first because I wanted the grains to separate when everything else was added to them. I fried the raw rice grains in the steaming pot until they started to turn brown in just enough oil to cover them, then dumped in the water. Twice as much water by volume than rice. It boils madly right off, so slam on the lid and cut the heat to low as your stove will go. It steams covered for 25 minutes on low, low, LOW, then the heat was cut off entirely, and still covered, it continues to steam for another 10 minutes. Getting the rice started first allows the time-savvy cook to do all the other cutting and sautéing and sauce making. In this case, the timing was impeccable, the rice was done at the precise moment the bananas went into the curry sauce. The vegetables intended for the rice were already sautéed concurrently with the sauce. So this whole thing messed up one little pot and two small sauté pans. When the rice was done * ding * the sautéed vegetables were added to the pot along with the herbs (cilantro and parsley) and the diced raw tomato. Brilliant, in'it?

Get this, a raw tomato combined with vegetables sautéed briefly added to rice that was steamed for 35 minutes, set in a ring on a plate around a chile/curry sauce with briefly cooked banana. Raw tomato, cooked banana. I am officially certifiably insane.

This stuff was so ... so ... so ... good. The whole idea of a banana with pork and vegetables is just bizarre, and yet I can not wait to try it again. Except next time, I'm using a lot less chile powder.