Have to say, different varieties had never occured to me. Bananas are bananas - although now I know they’re not.
A quick Google tells me the Cavendish represents 99% of all bananas traded internationally.
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John, come to Singapore/Malaysia and taste the “Pisang Raja” - its Malay name translates literally as “King of Bananas”. Its texture, taste and fragrance set it above all other types of bananas - once you have had the “Pisang Raja”, which is the most prized genre here. Once you’ve had it, you’ll never want to go back to any other types of banana. 
BTW, I just came across this new genre when I moved to Penang in 2017 - a specie of tiny bananas cultivated on Penang Hill. In Penang, it’s grown only up the hill which has to be reached via a funicular hill railway train. Unbelievably sweet and aromatic - the frustrating thing is, they are so tiny, you probably needed to eat a dozen at a go, which meant a LOT of peeling!
I Googled and surmised that, from the description on the Web, it’s probably the Lady Finger Banana:
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Home-cooked Kelantanese laksa for lunch, plus Sakura-scented jelly, studded with fresh strawberries and lychees for dessert.
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I would never have guessed it was some kind of laksa 
Interesting. And your plating is pretty!
The jelly cake is home-made? Fancy jelly! I like it ice cold (preferably the kind without coconut milk/cream).
I haven’t been making Asian-inspired meals. Looking through my photos I see a couple of things but they are not from any specific recipes.
“Fried rice”
I prefer making pork meatballs myself. This way I know what goes into them and use spices I like.
Same as above but on a plate
I’d wanted to make Peking-style noodles with bean sauce but didn’t have any original ingredients so I used what I had. I tried to arrange the bits like how this iconic meal is served in the capital. 
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Thanks, @Presunto! Kelantanese laksa is unique to the North-east region of Malaysia. Kelantan used to be part of Siam (modern-day Thailand) until 1909 when the reigning King Chulalongkorn ceded it to the British, and is culturally similar to the Thais as well as the Chams of Cambodia.
The Kelantanese laksa is a close cousin of Cambodia’s nom banh chok: rice noodles smothered in a very coconut-rich, mildly-spiced gravy replete with flaked fish meat, and garnished with fresh herbs and vegetables.
The Kelantanese version is actually even simpler than the Cambodian one: I first steamed a few firm, white-fleshed whole fish (I used yellowtail scad, but Spanish mackerel is also perfect), then de-bone and flake the meat.
Then, I grind lots of small onions and a bit of fresh ginger - some folks also used a couple of stalks of lemongrass, but I don’t use that, as the Kelantanese, despite their close links with the Thais culturally and linguistically, are strangely averse to the smell/scent of lemongrass which the Thais love.
I added the ground onion-ginger paste and flaked fish-meat straight into simmering coconut milk, then threw in a few slices of dried tamarind. Season to taste. It’s very simple.
No chilis were used in the cooking, as the Kelantanese also have an aversion towards anything too chili-spicy. But, for Kelantan laksa, ground chilis will usually be served on the side as a condiment.
Yes, home-made, since it was sakura/cherry blossom season in Japan last month (we couldn’t fly anywhere anyway) and I just remembered that I had some preserved sakura in my fridge which I could use.
Those looked real nice!
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Just beautiful. Time you opened a jelly shop! 
With the right publicity you will win a Michelin star for some of those dishes!
Thanks for the compliments! Looong way from home-cook to Michelin-rating, though. 
Breakfast this morning: Chicken keema with store-bought paratha.
Keema has a somewhat chequered reputation. Its origin harked back to the days of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857) where the spiced, minced meat was a celebratory dish served at auspicious occasions and festivals.
Yet, the ease of its cooking has rendered keema an unenviable reputation these days as a “poor man’s dish”, mainly because its use of minced meat, some of which may be discards or trimmings from choicer cuts of lamb, mutton or beef. It’s like the Indian equivalent of “sausage meat”.
“Keema” basically means “minced meat” in Urdu, and the same term is used throughout the Indian sub-continent to the Near and Middle-East: “kimás” in Greece, “kıyma” in Turkey, “gyemah” in Armenian, to name a few.
In India, keema takes on different regional variants, from the spicy Gujerati keema, to the greasy, robust Punjabi one. Outside India, the world actually has various types of “keema”: Tex-Mex chile con carne, British shepherd’s pie & cottage pie, and Thai “pad kra pao” are some examples.
In Malaysia, Indian-Muslims (called “mamaks” colloquially) stuff chicken or beef keema into their roti canai dough, and called it “murtabak”, or fold them in pastries, then deep-fry them to make samosas.
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looking beautiful
There was a shop run by a Pakistani here a few years ago, which sold “Keema Naan.” It was a delicious Keema stuffed inside a rotti. It was very very popular but the problem was he had only 3 tables in the shop. So you either had to stand in line a long time, or take away, or go away,
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Keema naan is quite common in Asian restaurants in the UK. One of our regular places offer it as well as other “enhanced” naans - cheese, chilli/garlic and Peshwari naan (with sultanas and almonds).
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It’s Day 15 of the latest COVID lockdown here in Malaysia, with further tightening of retail hours from today, continuing inter-district travel restrictions and the on-going ban on dining-in at restaurants.
Breakfast is home-cooked sinangag (Filipino garlic fried rice), pepped up with shrimps, egg & mixed vegetables. Adapted from Southern Chinese (Fujianese) fried rice, but given a sharp lift with the inclusion of copious amounts of minced garlic, this is a Filipino breakfast staple like no other.
I used cooked brown rice, refrigerated overnight so it’s dry-ish. Flavored using salt flakes - unlike its Chinese cousin, no soy sauce is used here.
Dessert was store-bought tau hu hwa from Ti Shen Fresh Soyabean Milk & Beancurd, my neighborhood soy bean dessert spot.
The making and consumption of toufu (豆腐) in China dates back over 2,000 years. As always, the invention of this food item was attributed to a royal personage - in this case, Prince Liu An (179 BC-122 BC), the grandson of Han Dynasty founder, Emperor Liu Bang.
Toufu-making was introduced to Japan during the Nara period (AD 710–794), where it’s called tofu.
Douhua (Chinese: 豆花) is a very soft version of toufu, and is consumed in savoury form in Northern China, but as a sweet dessert in Southern China.
In South-east Asia, it’s also basically served sweet, due to the influence of the mainly Southern Chinese immigrants: “taho” in the Philippines, “kembang tahu” in Indonesia, “tauhuai” in Thailand, “tàu hủ hoa” in Vietnam, “tauhway” in Singapore, “tau fu fah” in Cantonese-speaking parts of Malaysia, and “tau hu hwa” in Penang.
In Penang, “tau hu hwa” is also served with brown sugar syrup, besides the usual white sugar syrup.
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Filipino breakfast this morning: chicken adobo (I added some shitake mushrooms when cooking the stew) with fried egg and sinangag (Filipino garlic fried rice).
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Lunch today was home-cooked nasi ulam , courtesy of a personal friend, Pearly Kee, who also happened to be one of Penang’s best-known proponents of Nyonya cuisine - she runs Nyonya cooking classes at her home, besides having published two cookbooks on Penang-Nyonya food.
Nasi ulam is a rice salad, consisting of steamed white rice, tossed with a selection of very finely-shredded raw herbs and vegetables (lemongrass, turmeric root, Vietnamese coriander, mint, torch ginger, wild betel leaves, etc.). Pearly’s rendition of the dish included sides of salted duck’s egg and crisp-fried tempe/Indonesian fermented soybean cake, plus the indispensable sambal belacan/chili paste.
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Malaysia has extended its COVID Lockdown 3.0, which started in May till June 28. The continuing prohibition of dining-in at restaurants meant more cooking at home, of we don’t want to order take-outs or home deliveries.
I’ve decided to cook a Malay fish curry from the state of Kelantan: ikan masak kampung. This simple home-cooking recipe required a spice mix of freshly-ground onions, garlic, blue ginger/galangal, fresh turmeric root, tamarind, and some chilis.
The ground spice mix are added to simmering diluted coconut milk. One can add long beans, or cucumbers (cut into batons) and any type of fish - I used yellowtail scad.
I served it with some biryani rice and tandoor-baked chicken.
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“𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘶𝘱 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘗𝘰𝘰𝘩,” 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘗𝘪𝘨𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵, "𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧?”
“𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘵?” 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘗𝘰𝘰𝘩.
- From ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’, by A.A. Milne (1926).
The traditional English fry-up for breakfast this morning:
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Good looking breakfast , Peter. You can’t beat the Full English (or Welsh, Scottish or the Ulster Fry)
Love the salt & pepper pots. I collect ceramic and quirky pig ornaments, etc (not cute ones).
By the by, we went to the supemarket yesterday - first time since early March last year. It felt safe. Their cafe was open so we stopped for a coffee. Well, coffee and Full English - 2 sausages, 2 rashers of bacon, fried egg, mushrooms, tomato, hash brown and toast. A bargain at £4.55. Only missing some black pudding. It was weird - the cafe is uaually busy but there were only a couple of so other customers in there.
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Thanks, John. I got them from Liberty, London - its homeware section has never ceased to amaze me after all these years.
Oh my, I wish I can be back in London again.
As things stand at the moment, even the borders between the Southeast Asian countries are all still closed, so I can’t cross over to Thailand or Singapore from Malaysia right now, without fulfilling a lot of requirements (quarantine, COVID test, vaccination cert) between all the countries.
Much the same here, Peter. International travel is sort of permitted but there’s a whole raft of testing and quarantine requirements that deters folk from taking holidays overseas. And, on top of that, Scotland has just banned non-essential travel from my metro area in northwest England because of of our high case numbers of the Delta variant.
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