Paczki — Donuts with Vodka

I spent this last weekend in and around Appleton, Wisconsin, about three hours north of Chicago. Work-related, but there was time enough to explore the area, check out local restaurants, bookstores, liquor stores, bars…and bakeries.

Oh, yes, bakeries. As a kid growing up in Missouri, baked goods were some of my favorite treats: cream horns, cookies, pies, stollen, crumb cakes, and—from St. Louis’s long-closed Lake Forest pastry shop—a rare gooey butter cake. All vestiges and extrapolations of Northern European baking traditions, heavy on German and Swiss varieties.

So when I dropped by Manderfield's Home Bakery in nearby Menasha, I expected some of the bakeshop treats of my youth. Many were there, naturally. But also paczki, fried doughnuts that, while new to me, are probably old hat to anyone who grew up within driving distance of Chicago’s substantial Polish communities.

Paczki (pronounced in those parts “poonch-key”) are tacitly Catholic raised donuts generally available only from Fat Tuesday until Easter. They are often filled with fruit or, sometimes, cream. Some are glazed, some dusted in sugar. Others have no coating at all. And—get this, boozehounds—vodka is sometimes incorporated in the dough ostensibly to keep it from absorbing frying oil. I’m not sure I buy the story at all. Well, the rationale, anyway. Seems like temperature control would keep the oil in check. I’ll defer to the judgment of bakers on the effect of vodka in donut dough.

Since the bakery sells filled paczki only on Fat Tuesday itself and I was engaged elsewhere that day, I walked away with an unfilled version dusted simply with sugar. Where you’d expect a hole in a common American raised donut, each of Manderfield’s paczek has a flat, crisp disc covering one side, something like a tire's hubcap.

Sitting in the car, I cracked open a window to let in the smell of sugar and vanilla that swirled around the parking lot. Pulling apart the donut and cracking though the little crisp disc, I sent a cascade of sugar crystals down my black pea coat. I don’t need paczki every day, but I’ll make a special effort to be near a Polish bakery the next time Mardi Gras rolls around. And by next Lent, I'm going to get the bottom of this vodka thing.


Manderfield's Home Bakery
811 Plank Rd.
Menasha, WI 54952
920-725-7794
www.manderfieldsbakery.com

Recent Projects: Modern Moonshine Techniques

Bill Owens and I don't necessarily see eye-to-eye on what moonshine should be, much less what it is or even how to make it. But Owens understands the increasing popularity of specialty spirits that tap Americans' nostalgia for that good old mountain dew. On that, we can both agree.

As president of the American Distilling Institute, he also understands the revenue such spirits could generate for craft distilleries. When he asked me to edit Modern Moonshine Techniques, his recent book on distilling white dog and whiskey, I happily obliged.

When I'm not writing on my blog for free, I write, edit, and polish words for businesses that don't have the time or in-house expertise to tackle websites, books, manuals, reports, scripts, speeches—that sort of thing. Not as glamorous as whipping up cocktails before noon, but client projects that overlap like this make me especially happy.

The book is geared for distillers interested in setting up small craft distilleries and provides recipes for so-called moonshine (i.e., sugar wash spirits), corn whiskey, bourbon, wheat, and rye whiskeys. In it, Owens writes about federal classifications of spirits, types of stills, how to build a mash tun and a corn cooker for mashing maize, and how to distill on a 100-gallon pot still. Tapping ADI membership, he also gives sample spreadsheets for startup costs on a small distillery, grant application samples (for conducting distillery feasibility studies), and lists resources for supplies, books, and online information about running a distillery.

[Disclaimer: Should be obvious, but this isn't a review, just a description of a project on which I worked for my writing business. If you like, you can order a copy here. I'll leave it to others to review. My role was editing Bill's manuscript. I'm always open to talking to others about writing projects. For information on writing and editing services, click here.]

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Max Watman Writes Second-Best Moonshine Book on the Market

There aren’t but a handful of good books on American moonshine. Most are flawed by romantic notions and half-understood hearsay, of things heard, but never seen or done. Restrict your hunt to those written the last quarter century and you’re left with two—only two recognize that the “dying art” take on illicit distilling no longer holds water.

The first is mine. Go ahead and buy it here.

The second is Max Watman’s Chasing the White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw’s Adventures in Moonshine.

As a character in Watman’s book (see his chapter on hobbyist distilling), clearly I can’t be said to be objective. And we will let pass for the moment his suggestion that I be waterboarded to gain a broader understanding of who is who among American home distillers. He’s also a friend. That doesn’t mean that we should dismiss my admiration of his work. Max Watman clearly knows his liquor. Until I read his book, I hadn’t realized he’s a hell of a writer, too.

Chasing the White Dog briefly traces America’s well-known early history of illicit distilling, then dives into Watman’s own discovery of what moonshine is, how it’s made, and what it might become. In the process, he visits unspeakable dives where vile potations may be purchased and wedges himself into a racecar as he gets a grip on NASCAR’s connection to 20th-century moonshine.

I like to concentrate on small distillers trying either to make great products or doing interesting technical things with stills—essentially those making for themselves and their friends and family. Watman spends a great deal of his book on modern outlaws in the business of illicit liquor whose quality is more suspect.

He visits law enforcement types and sits in on trials, visiting with defendants and prosecutors alike. Moving away from suspect sellin’ whiskey, he hunkers down with distillers such as Jess Graber (who makes the particularly fine Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey) and Rory Donovan, co-founder of Peach Street Distillers, whose peach brandy is a sheer delight. In talking with these craft distillers, he gets a sense of the aspirations of modern American distillers, whether they’re operating in the open or in basements and garages.

If fact, Watman documents his own attempts to make liquor at home. From his first flawed experiments with George Washington’s rye whiskey to the creation of his own bespoke applejack, and his encouragement of others to do the same, Watman walks us through his false starts, his romantic notions, and, finally, his realization that making liquor at home should be no more illegal than making wine or beer. Bravo, Max.

Max Watman is a corn liquor Dominick Dunne, a literate, funny, and insightful apostle of bespoke liquor and homemade applejack. Like any jury-seasoned moonshiner, he claims his liquor-making days are behind him. Whether or not one chooses to believe that, let's hope his writing days are far from over.

Follow his Facebook page and Twitter account. And go buy his damn book.

Max Watman (2010)
Chasing the White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw’s Adventures in Moonshine.
304 pages
Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1416571787
$25.00

Mardi Gras 2010: Show Us Your…Kids?

This year’s Bacchus parade here in New Orleans reminded of why I love Mardi Gras. It’s not the beer or the beads. It’s the sheer, unadulterated joy that flows through the crowds from start to finish. And, oddly, all the kids.

If you’ve never been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, your view of it is undoubtedly skewed by portrayals in national media of wild revelers flashing untanned body parts, stumbling drunkenly around the French Quarter, and generally behaving badly.

That happens. It’s true. But those are primarily Texans and they do that kind of thing every big weekend whether they are here or at home. No, unless you come to New Orleans, you’re liable to miss something important about Mardi Gras: the celebration changes from neighborhood to neighborhood and it’s not the drunken debauch so often portrayed in media.

I’m staying Uptown in a friend’s house about five blocks off St Charles, the main parade route up here, lined with live oaks, Spanish moss, and stately homes. If I should forget a parade is happening, there’s the thunder of drums in endless marching bands to remind me to throw on shoes and a coat and get my ass down there.

And what’s there? A tailgate that snakes for miles along, and spilling over, the streetcar tracks. There’s beer here, sure ~ coolers full of it and in kegs pulled along in wagons by students from Tulane and Loyola. Just what you expect at a tailgate, along with grills and propane stoves stocked with sausage, burgers, and jambalaya giving off enticing smells.

But also generations of New Orleanians, from grandparents to infants, line the streets. Unlike the jostling, drunken, Girls-Gone-Wild crowds thronging Bourbon Street, Uptown parades are largely family affairs. The littlest toddlers are perched up on ladders while grade schoolers get front row spots where passing float-riders often reach down and hand them beads, necklaces, and plush toys, throws that they’re just tossing to everyone else.

During the Proteus parade, I spoke with a couple visiting from Alabama. The husband was from here and wanted to bring their two small boys to Mardi Gras. He wife was appalled at the idea. Until she came and realized—as all the locals know—it really is a safe place for little kids, older adults, and everyone in between. One son—who inititially claimed “I don’t want any beads”—was throwing his arms in the air after a mere six floats, screaming “Throw me somethin’, mistah!”

Now, I like catching parade throws as much as the next guy and lord knows I don’t mind a nip during a parade, but up here, among so many families—these are parades I never want to miss. Seeing rapturous kids beaming with smiles and hearing their whoops of delight remind me that Mardi Gras will outlast us all and that—for as long as I get this sack of bones to the route—parades will roll here in New Orleans.

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Mardi Gras with Rowley, Wayne, and Chris

Everywhere else, as they say, yesterday was just Tuesday. But here in New Orleans, it was Mardi Gras.

After making it through the Zulu crowds, I walked through the Marigny where I planned to catch up with the costumed revelers of the Society of St Ann, one of my favorite parades. St Ann is a rambling, stomping, great time. Unlike the huge parades uptown that make their way to Canal Street, this is a long band of motley, bawdy locals and hip visitors dressed up in costumes that range from the expected (hey, I saw that grinder monkey last year) to the topical (lots of Saints references). The crowd grows as it moves along from the Marigny to the French Quarter and picks up new characters.

On the way to R Bar, a sort of St Ann ground zero, I ran into Times-Picayune restaurant critic Brett Anderson. We shared a drink with his lovely girlfriend and moved on. Once in the Quarter, bon vivant bar tender Chris Hannah saw through my mask and offered a drink. Chris had a cooler filled with Chief Lapu Lapu, one of my favorite tiki concoctions. Made with Cruzan and Smith & Cross rums, it was just the thing.

And who was that in the Nagin-B-Gone exterminator outfit? Why, it’s that charmer Wayne Curtis dispensing Sazeracs to the crowd. First a squirt of bitters from the spray bottle, then a dose of Old Overholt from the pump dispenser.

Even the crowd of human-sized cockroaches couldn’t say no.

Who Dat? Black and Gold Boba Fett leads the 501st Legion

You may think that cocaine unicorns are the world’s most amazing mashup, a synergistic commingling rising to unparalleled heights of awesomeness. You’d be wrong.

What you would have failed to consider—and, to be fair, like me, you might not even know such a thing even existed—is Boba Fett. But not just any Boba Fett: a black-and-gold Boba Fett adorned with fleurs-de-lis and waving an American flag in the Who Dat Nation colors. Right there on St. Charles Avenue.

Yes, I’m in New Orleans again. Have been since before the Super Bowl. Will be ‘til next week. While I’ve seen some unforgettable sights in Mardi Gras parades before, I’d never seen the 501st Legion marching in the Krewe of Tucks.

The 501st—otherwise known as Vader’s Fist—is a band of dedicated Star Wars fans whose detailed costumes speak to endless hours of research and handicraft or thieving from Lucasfilm’s costume department. There were Jedis. There were jawas. Armored storm troopers marched in columns while the Imperial March cranked from speakers.

And when Darth Vader’s float came into view? Oh, forget about it. Vader, riding with a beer-drinking Jedi and buxom jawa, waved, shook hands, and handed out toys. Santa Claus himself could not have driven the crowd to greater frenzy.

Well, maybe if he were being pulled along by flying cocaine reindeer.

Tiki Roadtrip Part III: Hollywood's Tiki Ti

Last month, a road trip took me through California and Arizona. The trip was for work, but I got to hit a handful of drinking landmarks along the way. Tucson’s Kon Tiki was the first, followed by Polynesian prop provisioners Oceanic Arts in Whittier, California. The last stopover was an extended happy hour at Tiki Ti in Hollywood.

Tiki Ti (“the Ti” among friends who introduced me to it) has been kicking around since 1961. When Filipino bartender Ray Buhen founded the tropical bar, Kennedy was president. It was the year the Berlin Wall went up and the CIA reckoned the Bay of Pigs was a solid plan. Heady times. All of that’s gone. All except the Ti, that is.

Buhen, who had worked at Don the Beachcomber’s and Steve Crane’s Luau, banked on the popularity of rum-heavy tropical drinks he knew so well. He scored big time. His bar is not just still around: it’s still owned by the same family and is now run by his son, Mike Buhen, and grandsons. Tiki pilgrims will find iconic drinks prepared well and fast. But they’ll also bump elbows with locals — this is very definitely a neighborhood bar as well as a destination.

Over a few rounds, I chatted up patrons who lived nearby. One young couple referred to the joint as their living room and was working their way through nearly 90 drinks named on the menu. The walls, posts, and support beams are festooned with little cards bearing the names and messages of regulars who, over the years, have attempted to tackle that list. Silverlake barware supplier—and friend to bartenders everywhere—Joe Keeper is up there, right above the door’s lintel. Overwhelmed by the choices and can’t decide on a drink? Take a spin of the wheel and accept whatever potation fate declares. Seriously. No changing your mind. If you aren’t up for taking whatever the wheel deals, then just pick something off the menu.

But here’s the thing. Tiki Ti is small. Maybe a dozen stools at the bar and even fewer small tables. You could walk from end to end (when the place is empty) is five seconds. When it’s open, the joint is packed. Bartenders, tourists, business travelers, locals, and regulars jostle each other for a place at the cash-only bar. Lubricated with Scorpion Bowls, Nui Nuis, Painkillers, and 151 Rum Swizzles, the crowd is jovial and boisterous—but never so busy you can’t get a fresh cocktail.

If you plan on making a trip to Tiki Ti, check out their website for hours. It’s closed completely Sunday-Tuesday and only open evenings the rest of the week. Last call’s at 1:20am. It also closes for a while every now and then, so become a fan on Facebook and get hip to the schedule.

4427 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles California 90027
(323) 669.9381
Open Wed. through Sat. 4 pm to 2 am

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Bookshelf: Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer

What makes a good bacon curer is not rocket science,

but common sense.
The whole idea is not only to make bacon
but good bacon.

~ Maynard Davies

Such is the thrall in which bacon holds modern Americans that a young woman approached me and my stack of curing manuals at the coffee shop and, barely taking her eyes off them, asked “Can I come home with you?”

The passions which bacon ignites are understandable. Bacon should be wonderful. It should ignite passions. So often, it's the idea of bacon that fires us rather than actual bacon. Which is not how it used to be. In his 1833 Cottage Economy, William Cobbett lauded the stuff: “it has twice as much strength in it of any other thing of the same weight.” It’s only recently that truly excellent cured and smoked sowbelly has been broadly available as Americans rediscover the flavors and textures that we’ve been missing for all too long.

Most of what has passed for bacon during my lifetime has been pallid, tepid stuff. Oh, it was ok. And occasionally examples from small smokehouses were great. But the majority was so pumped with water and polyphosphates that it shrank to half its size on frying and threw off a strange white residue that brought to mind the gummy white residuum that accumulates in the corners of some peoples’ mouths when they’ve forgotten to drink their water.

Nasty.

Enter master curer Maynard Davies. I don’t go much for role models, but if I did, Davies—Britain’s reigning bacon pornographer—would be king of them all. Retired now from the trade, he’s a bit of a cult hero in the UK, a darling of Slow Food types for his continuing promotion of traditional British charcuterie. Given Americans’ lust for bacon and a growing locavore sentiment, it’s surprising he’s not better known here. His new book, Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer, might be just the thing to bring him to wider and well-deserved American attention.

His previous books—Adventures of a Bacon Curer and Secrets of a Bacon Curer—were charming memoirs from a seasoned expert in curing meats, must-haves for aspiring bacon-makers with a bit of experience under their belts, but not how-to manuals. Davies is dyslexic and his earlier, less structured, narratives about life on his farm and the vagaries of cottage industry charcuterie meant one had to read between the lines a bit to glean valuable gems about curing meats.

Not this time. Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer shows a firm editorial hand and explains his processes in clear, tight detail. It is truly a manual. Even an amateur could pick up this book and come away with a solid idea of what’s involved in curing pork and how to get started. The charm is still there. But his recipes are now laid out with precise ingredients and succinct directions. If there’s a brine, it’s not a “strong brine”—it’s 70% or 40% or whatever that particular recipe calls for. The color photographs are the best of any charcuterie or butchery book in my library.

The manual is meant for professional bacon curers and others who work with pork who might regularly break down entire pig carcasses, but the small batch sizes and easily scalable recipes mean that amateur and aspiring bacon curers will be able to tackle most of these recipes at home or in restaurant kitchens. A smoker, however, does help with the most interesting of the recipes.

Ingredients, techniques, and tools are covered as are facilities. Want to know how to lay out a curing house? That’s here. So is how to construct a proper smokehouse and how to maintain brine tanks. He includes notes on which pigs of what size to use and lays out—in full-color, step-by-step photos—how to divide their carcasses into useable parts. Be warned that the photos are deliciously graphic.

Recipes—about 150 of them—cover bacon (wet and dry cures), ham, an array of sausages, and other specialty items such as brawn, tongue, black puddings, and faggots (no snickering: they’re ancient British forcemeat balls roasted under a mantel of caul fat, akin to fancy-ass French crépinettes). Want haggis recipes? There are two. One, seemingly, is not enough.

Bacon varieties include: Ayrshire (with Demerara and black pepper); Derbyshire Favourite spiked with juniper berries; hard Romany bacon with mace, bay, and caraway; Penitentiary Dry Cured (a recipe learned from his younger days teaching American prisoners how to cure meats); London Spiced (allspice, coriander, muscovado sugar); and others, variously infused with the flavors of ginger, honey, raisins, coriander, cider, red wine, white pepper, red pepper, beer, treacle, and other ingredients that could delight American palates unfamiliar with traditional British recipes.

If you make sausage or cure your own meats—any kind, not just pork—don’t delay. Get a copy of Maynard’s book today.

It’s the one we’ve been waiting for.


Maynard Davies (2009)
Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer
160 pages, hardback
Merlin Unwin Books
ISBN: 978 1 906122089
£25.00

Buy it directly from Amazon.co.uk here or US Amazon here.
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Bookshelf: Fix the Pumps

It wasn’t uncommon, in the early years, for soda fountains to explode.

~ Darcy O’Neil

Darcy O’Neil has forged a thing of wonder.

O’Neil, who writes about beverages at Art of Drink, has leveraged his training as a chemist and bartender to bring together a fresh understanding of American soda-fountain drinks in his recent work, Fix the Pumps.

Soda fountains, You know: filthy, sticky wallows of vice where, for mere pennies, dope fiends could get their daily fixes of cocaine, strychnine, and morphine. See? Fresh understanding. O’Neil lays out a picture more akin to Luc Sante’s 19th-century New York underbelly than the squeaky-clean soda fountains fetishized by Americans yearning for wholesome, simpler times. When he’s done, you can appreciate why the anti-alcohol Temperance League waged war on soda fountains.

In about 100 pages, Fix the Pumps covers the origins and historical trajectory of American soda fountains and their relationships with druggists and saloons. It also cover basic chemistry and the terms, tools, and ingredients necessary to make the kinds of non- or low-alcohol drinks one would have been served in a soda parlor until the early 20th century.

For another 8o pages or so, a tightly organized collection of recipes for bygone syrups, tinctures, and flavorings is laid out. In addition to recipes for straightforward beverages, O’Neil includes directions for making nearly extinct classes of drinks—phosphates and lactarts. These drinks, once found across the country, have faded into such obscurity that in my entire life, I’ve only run across two parlors still making them.

These aren’t secret recipes, exactly, but they are the kinds of things you’d find primarily in obscure old recipe books, formularies, circulars, and manuals intended for the professional apothecary and druggist trade—the kind of books I have at home, but that’s because I spend too much time indoors.

Part of the beauty of Pumps is that O’Neil’s done the heavy lifting for you by scouring a long list of those old tomes to select a comprehensive and representative sample to transcribe and organize. He’s also converted archaic apothecary measurements of drachms, gills, grains, and minims into easy-to-replicate metric and American units of milliliters, ounces, grams, etc.

As much as I admire and respect what O’Neil has done, I absolutely hate the fact the Fix the Pumps is available only as a PDF right now. Don’t get me wrong—I’m glad to have it on my desktop. But there’s the problem: it’s on my desktop. Since it exists only as a PDF, I’m tethered to a computer whenever I want to refer to it. No taking it to the park, no reading it in bed, no thumbing through it at the coffee shop. Consequently, I read it much less than I want to. See, if I’m mixing syrups and blending acids, I don’t want my computer — or even a new iPad — anywhere near hotness, stickiness, or potentially corrosive mixtures. Darcy says that he’s considering a printed version. I will buy it the day it comes out.

Fix the Pumps also desperately wants an editor. O’Neil has taken on the gargantuan solo task of sorting through and presenting a delightful cache of forgotten gems of particular interest to the cocktail crowd. There’s no question that the author knows his stuff. But the writing wanders at times from repetitive narrative to sharply focused, crystal-clear explanations, and then back into the narrative weeds. A second, printed edition may also give time to tighten the copy.

These are minor concerns, though. I’m delighted to have a PDF of Fix the Pumps and eagerly anticipate a copy sitting on my shelf. Or my kitchen counter. Or my nightstand. I might even get one for the shelf and one to get sticky.

For your own copy, click here.

Fix the Pumps
Darcy S. O’Neil
$8.99


Goes well with:

• Volodimir Pavliuchuk’s 2008 book Cordial Waters: A Compleat Guide to Ardent Spirits of the World

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Day Old & Bold: Francis Lam’s Banana Pudding

It takes a little time to develop that flavor

(Day old banana puddin')
To soak it all up with your vanilla wafer
(Day old banana puddin')
So get out your bowl and your wooden spoon
(Day old banana puddin')
'Cause I can smell your pudding clean across this room
(Day old banana puddin')

~ Southern Culture on the Skids
Banana Pudding

A few days ago, in a Facebook thread about a pork shoulder I’d been cooking, banana pudding came up—specifically, a caramel-laced version Francis Lam posted recently. Someone—someone in my own household—declared “We ♥ Francis Lam.”

This is true. We do. What’s also true is that Francis, a friend of friends and erstwhile editor for Gourmet, has disrupted more dinner plans at our house than earthquakes and kitchen accidents combined. After Gourmet disbanded, Francis started writing—and writing and writing—at Salon.com’s food section. I really like his stuff. So much so that dishes I’d planned to make for dinner get shoved aside so I can play with his recipes instead.

Last Friday’s recipe for banana pudding in particular caught my attention. I had a load of bananas I intended to make into a Filipino banana ketchup. Enter Lam, all tatted up and full of loose talk about “Fancy Pants Banana Pudding.” Now, I like this tropical trifle as much as the next guy, but the version he wrote about incorporated a banana-spiked caramel. I was hooked. Ketchup? What ketchup? That’s for another day.

It was time for banana pudding. Click above to see Francis’ original post, but I’ve made some adjustments to the recipe (you know how these things go), so you can compare them if you like.

The result is simply one of the best banana puddings I've ever had. Homemade custard is almost always an improvement over store-bought powder, but the real trick pony here is the banana caramel. It gives deep, sweet, luxurious notes to the whole thing. Next time, I might toss a little rum into the dish (a quick dip of the cookies in, say, a nice Demerara), but for now, all I need is a spoon.

Banana Caramel
2 average to large bananas, very, very ripe (brown spots on skin)
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup water

1. In a blender or food processor, puree the bananas fully, until they pour like pancake batter.
2. Combine sugar and water in a very clean, heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil over high flame, and turn it down to a vigorous simmer. As the water boils off and you're left with pure molten sugar, the bubbles will get bigger but slower and less violent. Nothing will look like it's happening for a while, but keep an eye on it.
3. When you start seeing some color develop at the bottom, gently swirl the pan to distribute it; this helps the sugar caramelize evenly. Caramel is a game of chicken: Pull the sugar off when it's too lightly colored, and the flavor is one-dimensional. Pull it off when it's too dark and it's burnt, bitter and acrid. But once the color starts to turn, it turns pretty quickly, so you have to be brave but not stupid; only repetition and a good memory for color will tell you when you've got the perfect color. But if you're new to this, play it a little safe and cook and swirl until the sugar is amber-colored and remove it from the heat, still swirling gently.
4. Pour in the banana puree and stir vigorously with a spoon, heat-proof spatula, or whisk, making sure to dig in the corners of the pan. It'll hiss and sizzle and maybe even boil. Just stick with it and it'll calm down. When it's cooled, give it a taste. Delicious! You will have extra; keep it in the fridge [edit: in fact, you’ll have enough for a double-batch of the pudding below).

Pudding
1 ½ cups whole milk
½ cup heavy whipping cream, plus ½ to 1 cup more for whipping
3 Tbl 25g cornstarch
3 Tbl/45ml cold milk
2 eggs
6 Tbl/80g sugar
¼ tsp salt
2 Tbl/30g unsalted butter, cut in pieces
¼ tsp vanilla extract
½ cup banana caramel (or to taste)
1-2 large, firm bananas (ripe, but still pale yellow)
Nilla wafers (or ginger snaps , ladyfingers, or cookie or cake of your choice)

1. In a heavy 2-quart pot, heat the 1 ½ cups of milk and the cream just to the point of simmering, lower the heat, and hold it there.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the cornstarch and 3 Tbl cold milk to assure there are no lumps.
3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, sugar, and salt together until light.
4. Combine with the cornstarch mixture.
5. Slowly pour—while whisking—about half of the hot milk/cream mix into the egg mixture. This helps to temper the eggs and make sure that the shock of a bunch of hot dairy all at once doesn’t curdle them. Add the remaining hot dairy, and whisk to combine.
6. Working quickly, clean out the pan used to heat the milk (or just use a clean one), then return the mixture to the clean pan. Stir over medium heat, adding butter bit by bit, until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon.
7. Once thickened to a loose, well, pudding-like consistency, take off the heat, and pour into a mixing bowl.
8. Add the vanilla extract.
9. Fold in the banana caramel (if it’s very cold and thick from the fridge, measure some into a bowl, stir in a cup or so of the warm pudding, then fold this lighter, more malleable mixture back into the pudding).
10. Assemble the pudding by putting down a layer of cookies in whatever dish you intend to use. Then about a third of the caramel-laced pudding. Then a layer of banana slices (about ¼” thick), then more cookies, then a final layer of the remaining pudding mix.
11. Cover the top with plastic wrap to keep a skin from forming, and chill in the fridge overnight.

To serve, lash it with whipped cream.