THINGS I LIKE: BANANAS FOSTER

Many, many years ago, on my first visit to New Orleans, I went to  the world-famous Brennen' s restaurant for their well-known Brennen's brunch. The fabulous brunch concluded with Bananas Foster, a dessert consisting of fresh bananas sautéed in butter and brown sugar, with banana liqueur and rum. The rum was poured over them and flambeed, to burn off most of the alcohol,  after which  the flambeed bananas were served over vanilla ice cream. This has become one of my favorite desserts and I prepare it frequently when we have guests for dinner. Following a brief history of this dish, a recipe follows.

The dish BANANAS FOSTER was created at Brennan’s restaurant in New Orleans in 1951. In the 1950’s New Orleans was the major port for the importation of bananas from South and Central America. To help promote the importation, Owen Brennan, the owner of Brennan’s, asked his Chef, Paul Blange to create a dish with a new way to use bananas.  This was the dish that Chef Blange created. The dish was named after Richard Foster, a friend and frequent guest at the restaurant. It became the most requested dish on the Brennan’s Restaurant menu.

 RECIPE

Ingredients:

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
 1 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

 1/4 cup banana liqueur*
4 bananas, cut in half lengthwise, then halved.
 1/4 cup dark rum

 4 scoops vanilla ice cream

* I use Crème de Banana

Directions:

Combine the butter, sugar, and cinnamon in a flambé pan or skillet.

Place the pan over low heat either on an alcohol burner or on top of the stove, and cook, stirring, until the sugar dissolves.

Stir in the banana liqueur, then place the bananas in the pan.

When the banana sections soften and begin to brown, carefully add the rum.

Continue to cook the sauce until the rum is hot, then tip the pan slightly to ignite the rum.*

When the flames subside, lift the bananas out of the pan and place four pieces over each portion of ice cream.

Generously spoon warm sauce over the top of the ice cream and serve immediately.


* While this adds to the pageantry of preparing Bananas Foster, use care when doing this. Keep pan away from anything that might catch fire and hold the pan away from you while you are flambeeing.