The idea of cheesy bananas on toast is either going to have you licking both sets of lips and taking yourself off to the bathroom for some ‘me’ time or dry-heaving into your elbow and taking yourself off to the bathroom to have a calm-down-poo. Either way, you’re getting the recipe right here and right now and for once, I promise, there shall be no prattling on. Straight to business.
Well, no, not quite, I do need to clarify that I haven’t (as variously suggested on Facebook):
- suffered a head injury (well, he sometimes scrapes it with his teeth, but that’s not important right now);
- become pregnant (not for the want of trying, but again, that’s not important right now); or
- given up on life (not whilst I’ve got joy in my heart and a decent life insurance on Paul).
See, in amongst all the free copies of our cookbooks on our shelves, which I absolutely must get round to giving away, we’ve got some proper old classics. Books from a time where it was considered acceptable to suggest rock cakes were for the boys of the family and women shouldn’t occupy their thoughts any further than what to cook Father when he returned from a gruelling 36 hour shift clipping t’children round t’ear down t’asbestos-and-cigarettes mine. There’s a certain homeliness to a lot of the recipes and if it wasn’t for the dangerously high levels of offal in seemingly everything, or the tendency to suspend anything you could possibly imagine in aspic (and mind I haven’t seen good aspic since I deleted my Growlr account), we’d give most of them a go. Indeed, part of the new ideas for the blog is to dig out some long-forgotten gems and hence this banana and cheese beauty was born.
My favourite of all our old books is ‘A Pleasure to Cook’ by Sonia Allison (though, clearly without the steer of a good proof-reader, the spine simply reads ‘A Pleasure to Cook Sonia Allison’ – you’d hope she wouldn’t mind) (thank goodness the book wasn’t called Eating Out) – it’s awash with all sorts of nonsense but the best recipe is for a simple sandwich called ‘The Man About Town’. She’s clearly taken leave of her senses at this point, stuck a bit of bread down with some lettuce and then whacked a full back joint of roast chicken with legs attached on top, before sitting another slice of bread on top. To add to the fanciness she suggests sticking a ‘cutlet frill’ on the end of the legs, which mystified me immensely. My idea of a cutlet thrill is not looking behind me when I walk down an alley at night, but no, turns out it’s those frou-frou paper caps you stick on the end of the bone, like the world’s least-effective condom.
A bit more of a dive into the world of Sonia Allison reveals she was also the author of ‘Microwave for One’ which features possibly the most depressing cookbook cover you can imagine:
I mean, haway. You just want to reach in and tell her everything will be OK, don’t you? I’m not sure what troubles me more: the dinner setting for one, the you-know-it’ll-be-her-fourth glass of pomaine or the fact she has set the microwave across from her on the table so she can stare into the abyss whilst she eats. I imagine it’s how she set her hair. Not going to lie, I absolutely want this book to try and recreate a recipe for this blog, so if you have it at home and you can find it under your eighty-seven cats, please do drop me a line and I’ll happily take it off your hands.
Anyway! Here we find ourselves 600 words in and without a recipe, so let’s get to it.
If you’re going to accuse me of posting this cheesy bananas on toast purely to show off my fancy Le Creuset side-plates you’d be absolutely bang on.
The cheesy bananas on toast is actually genuinely delicious – so please do try!
cheesy bananas on toast
Prep
Cook
Total
Yield 2 slices
If you're still not sure, let me talk you through this: sweet and salty go together very well - so it stands to reason that cheese and banana should work. But this absolutely won't work with that crappy plastic cheddar from the corner shop, you need extra mature cheddar, preferably the stuff with tiny salt crystals in.
If you like all the constituent parts of the recipe, then give it a go. You can sack off the tomatoes if you're a fan - swap them out for chopped chives.
We have worked the calories out via the NHS app at roughly 240 calories, but of course it depends on the size of your banana and the brand of your bread. So do make sure to double check.
Ingredients
- two slices of wholemeal toast
- one medium banana, mashed
- 25g of extra-mature cheese
- a handful of cherry tomatoes
- salt
Instructions
- listen, I'm not gonna fib - I sort of feel if you need a recipe here, you might need to swap us out for Sonia Allison's Microwave for one, but nevertheless:
- toast your bread
- top with mashed banana
- top with grated cheese
- top with chopped cherry tomatoes and a sprinkle of salt
- grill until golden brown, texture like sun
Notes
Recipe
- controversially, Paul doesn't toast his bread before putting it under the grill, but you must understand that this way lies ruin and should you really trust a man who can watch both players on a tennis match at once? No I think not
Books
- our second book sold like absolute hot-cakes, which is no surprise when you look at how much we all love a cake - it gets excellent reviews and you can do no better, trust me: order yours here!
- a plea: if you have bought any of our books, please do take a moment to leave a review on Amazon, we will love you forever and it helps us out so much
- the first book is a bit cheaper and still an incredible bible if you're looking to lose weight with delicious recipes: click here to order
- our planner will help you on your way - loads of space to keep track of your weight loss and lovely pictures of us to be getting on with: here
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Courses breakfast or lunch, I don't care
Cuisine retro
Right, must get on.
It’s not me, it’s you, don’t call me.
J