Dear LPG, 

Although many of my attempts at cooking independently leave a little to be desired, I want readers to know the lengths I go to to keep things authentic.  

You may remember me mentioning a story attached to acquiring the banana leaf needed for my version of Papua New Guinea’s national dish, Mumu.  

This is a complex story, and I want to tell it to you now. 

I want to assure LPG readers that, while some recipe ingredients can be hard to find and I occasionally make mistakes, I always aim to use the most genuine ingredients possible.  

When I first saw a recipe requiring the banana leaf, I was a little dubious about where I could get one, and many will remember my worst all-time cooking disaster when I tried to substitute the leaf with greaseproof baking paper while preparing Lap Lap last June.  

Since then, I found a shop that sells them and felt confident using them again this time. While preparing to cook, I was out with a friend who knows more about these things when I tried to make a recipe that needed one, and she noticed a banana tree in the front garden of the house next door to where another friend of mine lives.  

I had often seen that tree, although to me it was just a sort of palm tree. But I hadn't bought any from the shop yet, and I had an idea. I would call my friend who owned the neighbouring house and see if he could persuade his neighbour to part with a leaf.   

After knocking on both doors and getting no reply, I decided to phone my neighbourly friend, who said he knew her son’s number and he would call. The tree's owner was away, but her neighbour (my friend, doubling as the go-between in this instance) contacted his neighbour’s son to try to get the permission needed to borrow one.  

By the time he got the permission and called me back, my friend and I had already got on a bus to Lewisham, but we planned to go back for it later that day. 

This and that happened as the day passed, and I was not able to go back for the leaf until the following day, but with my knowledgeable friend in tow, a good sharp knife for the leaf cutting, and a note to put through the front door, off we went.  

When we got there, my neighbourly friend was out, as was his neighbour, which cast a different light on the circumstantial evidence to be observed. It occurred to me that had a policeman been passing, even though it was the middle of the day, I would have looked pretty suspicious even if I was not holding an ‘offensive weapon’, but I pushed the note through the door and while my friend directed me to the best leaf for the job I made ready with the knife.  

While I did not need to be, I must have looked like a criminal with my sharp kitchen knife in hand and my eyes on the tree. I was glad I brought my friend with me, but we had quite a bit of discussion about which leaf would be least detrimental for the tree to lose and most suitable for my dish to gain, and I knew the video doorbell was watching our every move.  

I finally did the deed, and we stood on the street side of the fence while my friend showed me where the bananas would be if it were warm enough in the UK for them to grow. In my ignorance, I thought the flower of a banana tree somehow turned into bananas, and my friend was still trying to put me right on that point when the front door of the house behind the plant opened, and a young man appeared. There I stood with my camera in one hand and the knife in the other while my friend had hold of the dismembered leaf.  We mentioned yesterday’s phone call, but this was not the son who had been called, and all I could think of was how the circumstantial evidence must have looked from his point of view.  

I dread to think what might have happened then, but it all turned out fine in the end. After what I might have considered an unconvincing explanation of our actions, my Banana tree lesson continued with two people teaching the ignorant member of the group, although I was glad I did not have to explain how I came to be, where I came to be, doing what I was doing, to a passing upholder of the law. 

CB, Lewisham 

 

 

 

CB offers a little more information on Bananas for those who are interested…

 

 

(►►►)