In the world of popular desserts, youre probably more likely to think of cake, brownies, and pie than bananas. You may consider the popular banana split sundae to be a classic dessert but for most people, thats as far as theyre thinking. But theres one underappreciated banana dessert that combines rum, ice cream, and of course, bananas into a sweet, syrupy treat.
Bananas Foster may be a regional desserts, meaning that youre more likely to find it in a certain place than you would anywhere else. Just as Pennsylvania has teaberry ice cream and Buffalo has sponge candy, Louisiana boasts the Bananas Foster as their prized dessert (via Southern Living). Made with bananas cooked in rum, butter, and brown sugar thats spooned over vanilla ice cream, its not a particularly hard dish to make — unless youre not skilled in flambéing, but there are recipes that avoid that step altogether.
But just who is Foster anyway? Was it the name of some Louisiana legend or is it just a clever name lost to history by the inventors of the dish? The truth is rooted in the attempt to clean up New Orleans of crime and the history of bananas in the Bayou.
And so was born the spectacle of Bananas Foster, a decadent dessert named for Owen’s friend, Richard Foster, a local civic and business leader. Bananas are sautéedin butter and sugar and cinnamon and then bathed in rum, which is set aflame in a fiery burst.
Those good times didnt last, though. “Like all good family businesses, they got into a fight and split up the company,” Ralph Brennan says. “They wound up losing it all.”
But theres another reason why there were so many bananas in the kitchen that day. Ella and Owens brother John (Ralph Brennans father) ran a produce business that had a surplus of — you guessed it — bananas.
Meddling in the political affairs of so-called “banana republics” was only one of his many controversial business practices, however.
Ella decided to sauté them, remembering a dish of caramelized bananas that her mother often made for breakfast. She was also inspired by the popular baked Alaska dessert at a rival restaurant and thought, “Why dont we flame it like Antoines?” says Martin. The newly christened “Bananas Foster” was a huge hit at dinner that night.
By the late 1950s, New Orleans began losing its grip on bananas due to wage disputes and resistance to modernizing the port.
In the world of popular desserts, youre probably more likely to think of cake, brownies, and pie than bananas. You may consider the popular banana split sundae to be a classic dessert but for most people, thats as far as theyre thinking. But theres one underappreciated banana dessert that combines rum, ice cream, and of course, bananas into a sweet, syrupy treat.
But what to call this new flambéed dish? As the story goes, the dish was named after Richard Foster, a prominent member of the New Orleans Crime Commission and a family friend (via Southern Living). In honor of Foster and his work to clean up corruption in the Big Easy, the banana dish was named the Bananas Foster.
If youre ever down in New Orleans, theres a chance the locals or your tourist guide will point you to a place called Brennans. The spot is known for its Creole dishes, according to its website, and has been part of the already colorful New Orleans dining scene since 1946. It is also the birthplace of Bananas Foster.
You see, while bananas in New Orleans are a mundane sight today, there was a time when they were key to the Big Easys economy. Around the late 19th century to the early 20th century, bananas were something of a delicacy, an exotic fruit that was quickly becoming a staple of the American diet (via Nola). New Orleans served as one of the largest import hubs for bananas coming to Latin America. In the early 1950s, Owen Brennan — the founder of Brennans — requested that his chef Paul Blangé and his sister Ella Brennan create a dish featuring the exotic banana, as the family fruit company had a surplus of bananas (via The Kitchen Project).
Bananas Foster may be a regional desserts, meaning that youre more likely to find it in a certain place than you would anywhere else. Just as Pennsylvania has teaberry ice cream and Buffalo has sponge candy, Louisiana boasts the Bananas Foster as their prized dessert (via Southern Living). Made with bananas cooked in rum, butter, and brown sugar thats spooned over vanilla ice cream, its not a particularly hard dish to make — unless youre not skilled in flambéing, but there are recipes that avoid that step altogether.
Amazing Bananas Foster Recipe
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