We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming...

...to bring you a cooking post. Yesterday I made a clafoutis aux bananes, after hearing from my old friend CHM how good his clafoutis aux bananes turned out. A French clafoutis is a kind of custard tart but without a pastry crust.

The classic French clafoutis is made with cherries, but you can make the same kind of custard tart with plums, pears, apples, prunes, grapes, or any other kind of fruit that strikes your fancy.

In the U.S. South, we make a dessert concoction that we call "banana pudding" which vaguely resembles French clafoutis. It's vanilla pudding (American meaning — crème à la vanille in French) with banana slices that are cooked in the pudding in the oven in a pan lined with vanilla wafers and then topped with meringue that browns as the pudding bakes.

That's what I thought of making when I bought bananas at the supermarket yesterday morning, but then I remembered CHM's clafoutis recommendation. So I made that instead. The cookies I bought for the banana pudding— cigarettes russes, which resemble vanilla wafers that have been rolled into a cigarette shape before being baked, or right after, before they have cooled and crisped up — will be good as a crunchy accompaniment for the clafoutis, replacing the pastry crust that we didn't have to make. There's a recipe here in French. See my recent post about making a prune clafoutis for a recipe with ingredient quantities in American measures.