Ripe bananas offer a fruitful lesson in time management. Exiting a grocery store with bright yellow bananas in tow, I always feel like I have endless time to use them. Skip forward a few days, and I’m rapidly casting about for ideas for how to rescue my soft, browning fruit from a trip to the compost bin. That’s how I came across this banana bread pudding from chef Nichole Accettola, chef and owner of Kantine, a Scandinavian-inspired eatery in San Francisco, and author of Scandinavian from Scratch.
“When I found myself at work with a bunch of ripe bananas, a soft bread pudding with creamy pockets of chocolate custard seemed like the perfect way to use them up,” Accettola told me. Bananas aren’t the only ingredient that finds new purpose in her dessert — stale bread is also essential because of its drier texture, ideal for soaking up the custard. Accettola recommends day-old sourdough to …