Nice name for a recipe! What does it mean? I had no idea, until the wonders of the internet revealed that this was a dish invented by Leonard Nimoy, and the founder of Chez Jay in Santa Monica, Jay Fiondella. They had been flat-mates at some point. Here’s a nice pic of the interior of Chez Jay, and you can read all about it here…
This place is going on my bucket list immediately. Sounds utterly fabulous.
When I looked at this recipe it put me in mind of the kind of food Heather calls “warm pap”. Onions, potatoes and bananas? All mushed together and baked in a pan with cream? Sprinkled with parmesan and baked? Weird. But Leonard is on the testing schedule for the Columbo Cookbook, so I made this, despite my misgivings. After all, Corinne Griffith mentioned in Eggs I Have Known that Greta Garbo liked bananas in her potatoes, and who am I to argue with Garbo and Nimoy?
What can I say? It was weird, but not as weird as I imagined it would be. Leonard didn’t say what to do with the meat extract in his recipe, so I just mixed it in with everything else before leaving it on the hob for 45 minutes. He also didn’t suggest putting it in the potato jackets, but I just thought it was a good way of using them up rather than just putting them in the fridge and then forgetting about them…
The cookbook this recipe was published in has some very stern copyright restrictions, so I’m not going to transcribe the recipe here. If you’d like it though, just get in touch via the Contact Me page and I’ll send it your way.
“I’m behaving disgracefully, I have eaten animal flesh and I’ve enjoyed it. What is wrong with me?”
