Banana bread is, of course, a treat any time of year. But something about fall makes it feel like peak banana bread season. Maybe it’s because, after a summer of nectarines and peaches and cherries, we turn our attention to the steadfast banana. Maybe it’s because it’s finally cool enough to have the oven running. Or maybe it’s because having kids in the house inevitably means fishing uneaten, freckled brown bananas out of lunchboxes at the end of the day. Whatever the reason, we’re declaring it banana bread season, and celebrating with Lidey Heuck’s aptly named easy banana bread.
Featured Recipe
Easy Banana Bread
It is, however, very much soup season, and this butternut squash soup from Yewande Komolafe is the ideal home for all those curvy gourds at the supermarket. You’ll want to roast the squash first to coax out its sweetness; this can be done a day or two ahead if you want to give yourself a leg (squash?) up. If you have any leftover roasted squash, you’re halfway to Nik Sharma’s roasted butternut squash with lentils and feta, which, while we’re talking about planning, would be a fantastic desk lunch.
Hefty batons of leeks are beginning to pile up at farmers’ markets — grab three of them for Melissa Clark’s roasted fish with leeks and olive salsa verde. Washing and slicing the leeks and pitting the olives makes for a good bit of prep work, but it’s pleasant work when shared with a friend over a glass of white wine.
To wrap things up: cabbage rolls. (See what we did there? Also, sorry.) Or, if you’d like your rice unwrapped, try Christina Morales’s adaptation of this djon-djon rice recipe from Natacha Gomez-Dupuy, the author of “Bak Fritay: Haitian Street Foods.” Throughout Haiti, writes Christina, djon-djon mushrooms grow during the country’s rainy seasons, and are picked and dried to make this intensely flavorful black mushroom rice. You can read more about the dish here in The New York Times; Christina includes online sources for djon-djon if you don’t have a Caribbean grocery store near you.
