Best Banana Bread
from Marie Mitchell's award-winning cookbook, Kin
I want to tell you about a cookbook that I love. Kin by Marie Mitchell. Marie is the chef and cofounder of Island Social Club, a Caribbean supper club. She’s based in East London and she’s the daughter of Jamaican immigrants. Her cookbook celebrates recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation, and while the food alone is worth your time and attention, for me, it’s the way Marie weaves in her friends’ and family’s stories and seeks to understand on a deeper level the Caribbean and its diaspora that I found to be moving beyond measure.
I had the honor of working on the North American edition of the cookbook. You know how when your favorite musician releases a new album and you feel like they are singing lyrics written just for you? Or the way we feel like we truly know celebrities, as if they were our best friends? That uncanny sense of closeness from simple repetition can occasionally happen when I am working on someone else’s cookbook. Especially when I am adapting a text for North American readers, I try to really understand an author’s perspective and to know intimately their cooking style and kitchen language—without leaving any of my own fingerprints on the work. Often, I end up being able to recite an author’s life story and I feel as though I lived it alongside them.
I hope Marie will agree, however, that during the process of making the North American edition of Kin and in the months that followed, we actually did become friends. I may have started off as just a big fan of hers but, by the end of the project, we had connected in our hearts, which of course is perfectly fitting given the topic of Marie’s book. She and I are kin.
Now, I can’t look at an overly ripe banana without thinking about how both Marie and I stockpiled bunches of them in our freezers during the blurry postpartum days after our children’s births. Speaking of overly ripe bananas, this month’s recipe puts them to very good use. Marie has kindly shared her recipe from Kin for Best Banana Bread, and I would never joke around about the word best—hers really is. I’m not interested in any other contenders, thank you very much. She even offers a vegan variation that’s super simple to make.
Thank you so much to Marie for this banana bread recipe, my new go-to! Also, please join me in congratulating Marie on her well-deserved win for Debut Cookery Book at the Fortnum and Mason Awards!
The recipe for Best Banana Bread is for paid subscribers below and can also be found alongside many other brilliant recipes in Marie Mitchell’s cookbook, Kin.