I feel we have taken the whole “we eat first with our eyes” ethos too far — not so much celebrating beauty as chasing and discarding it like some endless game of culinary paintball. And yet — I concede — I do love a rippled food, from ice cream to soup. Whether it jogs some innate, abstract art-via-fingerpainting Stendhalian response or whether it’s a satisfying visual demonstration of flavours at the edge of their breaking point before they acquiesce and blend together, or whether it’s because it’s cute, the ripple appeals to me and I keep finding myself returning to it. Even, in the case of this Espresso Tahini-swirled Banana Bread, where you can taste it but not really see it, where you have to trust me that it’s there — something for the true ripple-heads who don’t need mere visual stimulus to enjoy the weaving together of edible elements.

Periodically I feel the need to tutu with a banana bread recipe; here it’s with a meandering swirl of dark instant espresso powder and pale, mellow, hulled tahini, supported by some butter and sugar to create nutty, rich depth and a surprisingly gentle jolt of caffeine in every otherwise regular banana-crumbed bite. The floral sweetness of the banana and the coffee’s earthiness play oddly well together, with banana’s creamier properties echoed in the fudgy tahini.

This loaf may look a little squat and dense, and you know what: it is, but it still tastes splendid and the texture is terrific — and somehow improves over time. Having made this in a larger loaf tin and one of a slightly-smaller-than-usual size, I think it works better with higher walls and less surface area; but it’s still excellent as you see it in the photos, crouching down with its ripples tightly furled in on themselves. Besides which, I used a Nigella recipe as the base — if you’re going to mess with perfection, you might as well not mess with perfection while you’re at it, as I don’t see the point of forcibly coming up with something new just for the sake of avoiding attribution — and I’m quite sure it’ll work reliably and stalwartly whatever vessel you bake it in.

If you’ve got an abundance of bananas to use up and this is simply not making a dent, I also recommend my Breakfast Banana Bread, my Banana, Pear, and Dark Chocolate Muffins, and — though it’s barely a using-up exercise — these Small Batch Peanut Mocha Cookies.

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PS: If you’re after a way to support a local charity who are doing their level best to get in on the ground and provide aid to people in Palestine, despite nonstop setbacks and ongoing atrocities, ReliefAid are doing amazing work to reach people in Gaza and I urge you to support them if you can.

Espresso Tahini-swirled Banana Bread

Nutty, dense, with a caffeine kick, and yet entirely inobtrusive — just make sure you use the honeyed, creamy, hulled variety of tahini. If you can find a Palestinian brand then so much the better. The idea for this recipe is mine but the base recipe for the banana bread comes from Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess.

• 125g butter
• 150g sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 small, very ripe bananas (300g peeled weight)
• 175g flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Espresso Tahini Swirl

• 1 tablespoon instant espresso powder
• 2 teaspoons hot water
• 3 tablespoons hulled tahini
• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon flour

1: Set your oven to 170C/325F and line a loaf tin with baking paper. Melt the 125g butter gently and briskly stir in the 150g sugar.

2: Beat in the two eggs, also briskly, followed by the teaspoon of vanilla, and then mash in the 300g ripe banana. I find it best at this point to switch from whatever implement you were using to a fork, which will make significantly quicker work of the bananas than chasing the pieces around the bowl ineffectually with your wooden spoon or spatula.

3: Lower a sieve over the bowl and sift in the 175g flour, the two teaspoons of baking powder, and the half teaspoon of baking soda. Un-briskly stir everything together until just combined into a thick, golden batter.

4: Now for the swirl — dissolve the tablespoon of instant espresso in a small bowl with the two teaspoons of hot water. Once the grittiness of the powder has subsided, stir in the three tablespoons each of tahini, melted butter, and brown sugar, plus the tablespoon of flour. Taste it if you want, it’s undeniably good and this makes plenty.

5: Spatula half the banana bread batter into your paper-lined tin, and dollop small spoonfuls of the tahini mixture over the top. Repeat with the remaining batter and mixture respectively, then drag the tip of a knife or a skewer through the batter to loosely ripple the two mixtures together.

6: Bake the banana bread for an hour, to an hour and ten minutes — if you have a larger tin you’ll probably need the extra ten — at which point the top should be burnished golden and springy. If you try to slice it right away it’ll fall to pieces but I can’t blame you for trying; this is at its best once cooled a bit, and is surprisingly excellent even days later straight from the fridge.

Makes one loaf.

Notes:
If you replace the swirl ingredients with about 60g chopped walnuts and some booze-soaked sultanas you’ll have Nigella’s original; it’s also very good with some roughly chopped chocolate in it.
Definitely look for the instant coffee labelled “espresso”, but if you can only get regular instant coffee it’ll still work, but may need another spoonful for flavour oomph.
Absolutely 100% only use hulled tahini — that paler, creamier substance — unless you’re extremely sure of your convictions.

music lately:

What You Do To Me by Teenage Fanclub, who I joyfully saw perform live a couple of weeks ago; alas they didn’t play my favourite song of theirs (Norman 3, I just really wanted to hear its Simpsons-rake-joke slash Hey Jude outro chorus in real life) but they did play this unutterably charming bubblegum-snap of a tune and they were very funny which did go some way to mollify me. I hadn’t ever realised before but almost every single song is about how thrilled they are to be your boyfriend and in your general vicinity; an admirable sentiment.

Feeling Electric performed by Anthony Rapp from the musical of the same name which later became Next to Normal, the latter of which I saw a fantastic production of in Takapuna recently — and while I appreciate that N2N is significantly more polished and there’ll probably never be a run of songs as gobsmackingly perfect as the stretch from I Miss the Mountains to I’m Alive, I still have a lot of fondness for the scrappy ludicrousness of Feeling Electric, with its Sweet Home Alabama-esque riff and bold conceptuality and even the imperfections in this recording which are so familiar now as to be entirely part of it.

Bound for the Floor by Local H, even though the word “copacetic” sets my teeth on edge inexplicably I have to salute the willingness to shoehorn in an unnecessarily ten-dollar word and the song is, of course, all the better for it, the rhythm of the four syllables being immensely satisfying to the ear.