From Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste: Hua Moa Tostones

Banana bread, banana fritters, banana cream pie and Bananas Foster: All can be made with the cheap, yellow, Cavendish banana that dominates grocery store shelves from coast to coast. But there has been a lot of debate about how much longer mono-culture Cavendish can hold out without being affected by some form of the disease that wiped out its predecessor, the Gros Michel banana, in the '50s. (Read the latest on that from banana-writing expert Dan Koeppel )

Big grower Chiquita says, “there's no crisis—yet,” and that they're working on alternative solutions. Still, curiosity—and common sense, has many chefs experimenting with flavorful, lesser-known bananas that can add nuance to banana-recipe favorites. Chefs say it's like apples: If the only apple you knew was a Granny Smith, you'd use it. But if you then tasted the Mutsu, Braeburn, Golden and Gala, a panoply of flavor and textural possibilities would suggest themselves.

Going the savory route in Latin-food-mecca Miami, Chef Michael Schwartz of Michael's Genuine Food & Drink talks about the rare, short-and-fat Hua Moa plantain banana he's been frying up into tostones (fried, flattened plantain patties) instead of using regular plantains. “If this is the end of days for the standard, supermarket banana, I'm not losing any sleep,” says Schwartz. “Being in South Florida, we are lucky to have access to rare banana varieties like Hua Moa, a banana-plantain originating in the South Pacific, but now grown here.” The Hua Moa, says Schwartz, elevates pedestrian tostones—which can be very good—to a whole new crispy-on-the-outside, creamy-sweet-on the-inside level of greatness.