During my recent trip to New Orleans I decided to try some new restaurants and new dishes at some of my favorite restaurants. This was a super successful exercise for the most part, but in choosing certain things, I de facto was deciding against other things. My all-time favorite dessert is bananas foster. I usually make a trip to the Palace Cafe on Canal Street for my bananas foster fix when in town, but I tried a (disappointing) pineapple upside down cake instead.
So a week later, I’m home and my bananas foster craving has not been satisfied. So I decided to take action in my own behalf. The Saints game was televised here in San Francisco, so we decided to have a nice breakfast in and Bananas Foster French Toast was on the menu.
The whole key to Bananas Foster is, of course, the sauce. I do a little take off on the traditional sauce which is almost as good (not quite, but pretty close). The sauce can be poured over vanilla ice cream (the traditional dish) or spooned over french toast or bread pudding or cheesecake or anything else that would benefit from a little brown sugary caramely boozy bananay taste sensation.
Bananas Foster Sauce
Serves 2 – 4 people
Ingredients:
- 2 bananas (not too ripe)
- 2 T butter
- 1/4 c brown sugar
- 1/8 t cinnamon
- 1/4 c rum (I used the dark Puerto Rican rum I got on my recent trip to Puerto Rico)
Directions:
1. Slice the bananas into 2 inch slices.
2. Melt the butter in a large skillet. Add the brown sugar and cook, stirring constantly until the sugar is melted.
3. Add the bananas and continue cooking for a few more minutes until the sauce is thick and syrupy and the bananas are warmed up.
4. Sprinkle the cinnamon over the bananas.
5. Pour the rum into the skillet. At this point, you would normally set the sauce on fire and do a little flambe action but unless you have company you want to impress, you can just cook the alcohol out by letting the sauce continue to cook for a minute or so.
Serve the lovely sauce over the vehicle of your choice as soon as possible. If you are not serving it right away, make sure to warm it up gently at the last minute.
French Toast
Serves 4
Ingredients:
- 8 slices of bread (challah is spectacular, french bread is wonderful, regular sandwich bread will work too)
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 c milk
- 1 t great quality vanilla (I adore real Mexican vanilla)
- 1 T (or so) butter
Directions:
1. Whisk eggs, milk and vanilla in a shallow dish.
2. Melt butter in a large skillet.
3. Dip each slice of bread in the egg mixture so that it soaks up plenty of the custard.
4. Place the custard soaked bread and cook over medium heat until both sides are beautifully browned.
5. Serve topped with powdered sugar, syrup or super de-lish bananas foster sauce.
Oh … and don’t forget that side of bacon.
While we were eating our fabulous breakfast, the Saints beat the Falcons in a close game in Atlanta. Wow! An undefeated Saints team … Sweet!
And … the rain cleared for a while and left a beautiful rainbow just across the street. If it hadn’t have been so cold, I would have been outside looking for that pot of gold.
