There's something amiss in the dining room. There are five places set but only four of us are present. I look around and shrug my shoulders. My father is always late. He spends hours doing something that should take half an hour. The scary thing is that I'm pretty sure I'm inheriting that trait. The more I realise how similar I am to my parents and the more I push to be different, the more aware I become of how all the paths in front of me are leading to the same destination. But that's okay.



















Sometimes you can't rush things. I like spending time mulling things over but I think that my dad could represent Lebanon in the Olympic mulling-things-over team. Not that there is such a thing. Sorry to disappoint. It takes another twenty or so minutes before he's back. He was at the supermarket, he says. He didn't buy much, he adds. My dad has a habit where he sticks by a simple set of essentials that he buys on every trip to the supermarket. This hasn't changed for years. Bread, eggs, milk, cheese and bananas. The thing is, those are all staple food items but he has one extra issue to contend with - he always buys far too much. In his mind it's better to have too much than to have too little. Not that I necessarily agree with that theory but he'd grown up in a country during a long civil war - you had to always stock up just in case.

The bread, eggs, milk and cheese all get eaten before their expiry date but the bananas always linger. As banana connoisseurs know, there's nothing wrong with a browned banana, but when they turn that unappealing colour the collective mindset changes and bananas get left to rot. Herein lies the problem. We always have too many bananas going off at the same time. So over the years we've had to find a way to use them. Aside from smoothies or milkshakes, this is probably the simplest and tastiest recipe you could make. I've layered it with crunchy peanut butter and nutella to make this really difficult to resist but having it naked (the cake, not you) is just as rewarding.

Ingredients
3 overripe bananas - mashed
130g of butter + more for greasing
250g plain flour
2 large eggs - lightly beaten
150g soft brown sugar
2 teaspoons of baking powder
a sprinkle of cinnamon + nutmeg
peanut butter (optional)
nutella (optional)

Method
Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and flour a cake tin (1kg capacity). Whisk the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time. Add the bananas. Sift the other ingredients into the mixture and work until fully incorporated. Pour into the baking tin and bake for 45minutes -1 hour or until browned and a toothpick comes out of the deepest part clean. Cool on a wire rack. Cut up into big portions and serve up with peanut butter and the nutella or a vanilla cream. This is no-nonsense and decadent in a different way. It'll keep at room temperature for four days (covered in cling-film).

One of my culinary obsessions is good salt. I love being able to feel the crunch of good natural sea or rock salt on certain foods and I also love the flavour altering qualities real salt has on many ingredients. One of those ingredients that's transformed by a good pinch of salt is of course caramel. Lovely lovely caramel. The taste sensation produced by combining these two ingredients is nothing new but I feel that it's an important component in elevating a banoffee pie into something more special. The interplay between the newly altered caramel taste, the biscuit base, the bananas and the cream is so good that you'll really have to try this for yourself. I'm lucky I got pictures of this in time because my tasters scoffed it all up! Also, please click on the pictures to see them in their full glory!

















Ingredients
Dulce de Leche
1 can of condensed milk
enough water to immerse the can (and more to keep topping up the levels)
a pinch of Maldon sea salt

















Biscuit Base
crushed digestive biscuits
enough butter to hold the base
2-3 tablespoons sugar

Topping
1 banana
1 pot whipping cream
3-4 tablespoons of caster sugar
70% chocolate for grating

















Method
Dulce de Leche
Remove the label from the can of condensed milk. Pierce it in two places (on the top) with a can opener and immerse in a heavy based pan with enough water to cover 3/4 of the can. Boil the can for a good 2-3 hours to get a sauce-like consistency. Boil it for longer to get a firm caramel. You need to watch the can. Keep adding water so it consistently reaches 3/4 of the way up. Let it cool and scoop out the goodies. Alternatively put some trousers on and buy a can of ready made dulce de leche at the supermarket.

Biscuit Base
Crush some digestive biscuits (but not to a completely fine grain). Add enough melted butter and the sugar so that the crumbs stick together. Place the base at the bottom of of a lightly buttered circular mould onto a plate and refridgerate for 15 minutes. You could freeze it for 5 instead. But who has room in their freezer? Take it out so you can layer on the other stuff.

















Topping
Scoop on the dulce de leche on to the biscuit base making sure not to go all the way to the edge of the mould. Sprinkle in a few flakes of the Maldon sea salt. Slice a banana and place the slices on top of the dulce de leche and the biscuit base. Whip up the cream with the sugar and add one spoonful ontop of the banoffee pie (this is my perfect ratio but add more if you feel like it). Grate the dark chocolate to finish. Watch the scavangers totally annhiliate your pie. Feel good about yourself.