On Bendy Vegetables and Black Bananas

So sometimes life gets in the way of organised cooking/eating and you end up with rather sad specimens hiding out at the back of the fridge.  I hate throwing food away so have to rescue these poor abandoned items and give them a new lease of life as something completely delicious.

Bendy Vegetable Soup is a favourite and here I have altered it to use up the woody ends of asparagus.  It seems such a shame to have to throw away something so delicious and they make such a fab soup!

Woody Asparagus Soup

(Quantities don't matter)

Onion

Potato, celeriac or parsnip

Celery (optional, but something that does tend to end up bendy fairly regularly)

Asparagus ends

Garlic

Vegetable stock cube

(all very sad - woody asparagus, bendy celery, slightly bendy celeriac, and the onion was starting to go a bit mouldy...)

Slice the onion and gently fry in oil until soft.  Add the celery if you are using it and garlic and fry for a few more minutes.

Add the potato/parsnip/celeriac and asparagus chopped into pieces.

Fry for a couple of minutes, add a splosh of sherry/marsala if you have any knocking about, some salt and pepper, the stock cube (1 cube per pint water) and cover the whole lot in water.  Cover, bring to the boil and simmer until the vegetables are soft, top up the water if necessary.  Blend until smooth, then pass through a sieve to collect any last stringy asparagus bits.

Serve hot with a swirl of cream and hot toast or crusty bread.

For generic Bendy Vegetable Soup, follow the same recipe but swap the vegetables and asparagus for whatever poor vegetables you have in the back of the fridge.

Next up - for those occasions when the bananas get abandoned and sad but you have no time/energy/need for banana bread.

Fried Black Bananas

Sad bananas (although this also works very well with normal bananas)

Butter

Maple syrup/orange juice/honey

Melt some butter in a frying pan, then add the bananas, cut in half length-ways and width-ways.

Fry gently until they start to turn golden, then turn carefully (a flat knife works well) and cook the same on the other side.

When cooked, remove to a plate/dishes and add a large splosh of maple syrup, orange juice or honey, stirring until all the sticky bits come away.  Pour over the bananas and serve with cream, yogurt or ice-cream.  You can also sprinkle with chopped toasted pecans/walnuts/grated chocolate.

Not very beautiful, but absolutely delish!  My bananas were rather the sadder side of sad, so ended up rather squashy, but fresher bananas will hold together better.