Gary Christensen, Chef and Assistant Food Service Manager was up to the challenge of making Flambéed Special Desserts for residents of the nursing center. Banana’s Foster was a treat for all! Nice Job Gary!
Want to try this at HOME? Here’s how from ‘the reluctant gourmet’ cookbook
Ingredients:
Preparation:
Other than getting all the ingredients together, the only prep is to prepare the bananas. The official Brennan’s way to cut the bananas is to cut them in half lengthwise and then halve them diagonally. But, if serving a larger crowd, you can cut the bananas into ¼ inch coins. The presentation suffered minimally but it went a lot further and didn’t affect the taste at all.
What Next:
In a good-sized sauté or fry pan, combine the butter, brown sugar and cinnamon and heat over low heat until the butter melts and the sugar dissolves. Add the banana liqueur and stir. Add the bananas and cook until they start to soften and begin to brown. Be careful not to burn them.
Remove the pan from the flame and add the rum. I always advise to remove a hot pan from the flame when adding any kind of alcohol just to be careful. It takes a bit for the rum to get hot enough to flame but you never know. Return the pan to the stove; cook until the rum is hot, about two minutes.
The official method to “flame” the bananas is to tip the pan slightly and ignite the rum. When I tried this nothing happened. It may be I didn’t let the rum get hot enough or I was just being a little timid. So I ended up using one of those long nosed fire starters and had no problem igniting the rum to flame the bananas.
Please be careful whenever you are cooking with alcohol and although I don’t think you will need one for this recipe, it makes sense to always have a small fire extinguisher in the kitchen just in case you ignite more than the bananas.
The flames burn off the alcohol in the rum and leave a wonderful flavor.
Spoon the ice cream into individual bowls, add the bananas, and top with the warm sauce. You’ll want to serve this immediately since it doesn’t take long for the sauce to melt the ice cream.
