Cajun & Creole · Dessert
Bananas Foster
- Intermediate
- 15 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a sweet edge rounding the corners, leaving a faint perfume.
Ingredients
- 4 bananas, halved lengthwise
- 80g butter, 100g brown sugar
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- 60ml dark rum + 30ml banana liqueur (optional)
- Vanilla ice cream
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Melt butter and sugar into a bubbling caramel; add cinnamon.
- Bananas in, 1 min per side, basting. 1 min
- Off heat, add rum; return to flame and tilt to ignite (or just simmer 1 min, still delicious). 1 min
- Over cold ice cream immediately.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Tawny Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry or bourbon
- From the Taps
- Barleywine
- Zero-Proof
- Cold-brew coffee
Caramel echoing caramel: oxidative aging built the same flavors into the glass that the pan built into the plate.
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