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Bananas and Bass
To bring out the full flavor of a fresh-water bass try cooking it with bananas for piquant contrast. If the bass is to be fried in butter, cut bananas lengthwise in halves and let them sizzle brown and tender alongside the fish. Or broil with the fish in the same way, brushing the halved bananas with butter and sprinkling with salt. If baked, use whole bananas.
A sketch rather than a formula: the book assumes you can cook a bass and only wants you to put bananas next to it. The variables worth pinning down are banana ripeness and the difference in cooking time between fruit and fish.
- The hinge: ripenessUse bananas that are yellow with green tips, not spotted. Fully ripe fruit collapses into mush in a hot pan and turns cloying against the fish; slightly underripe halves hold their shape and stay tart enough to earn the word piquant.
- Which bass, and how bigThe book says only 'fresh-water bass', which would most likely mean largemouth or smallmouth, though any similar pan-sized fresh-water fish would behave the same way. A 10-12 in. fish per person, or two smaller ones, scaled and gutted, head on or off as you like, is a reasonable working portion.
- Pan fryingThe original says butter. Over medium heat plain butter is workable, but for a thick fish clarified butter, or half butter and half oil, guards against the milk solids browning too far. Fish first, then the banana halves cut side down in the same fat, giving them roughly 3-4 minutes a side.
- BroilingThe recipe gives no distance or timing. As a guide, about 4 in. from the element, turning once, allowing roughly 5-8 minutes a side depending on the thickness of the fish. Bananas need only 2-3 minutes a side and are best put under after the fish is half done, or they will blacken.
- BakingThe original gives no temperature and says only 'use whole bananas'; most likely this means left in their skins, which steam the fruit and keep it from drying. A moderate oven, around 375F, suits both: allow roughly 10 minutes per inch of thickness at the thickest part, until the flesh flakes and reads 145F. If the bananas are baked in their skins the skins will go black; split them and spoon the fruit out.
- SeasoningSalt and butter are all the original asks for. A squeeze of lime or lemon over both fish and fruit at the table sharpens the contrast and is in keeping with the dish.
- Over a campfireNothing in the original suggests an outdoor setting, but the method adapts: rake a bed of coals to one side, set the bananas there in their skins and put the fish over the hotter part. The bananas are done when the skins are uniformly black.
- YieldThe original specifies no quantities. One banana per fish, halved lengthwise, is a sensible ratio for one person.
Fresh-water bass has a mild, slightly sweet flesh, and the fruit works with it much as fried plantain works with fish in Caribbean and West African cooking. The instructions are loose: the book assumes the reader already knows how to cook a bass and offers only the pairing.