THE COOKBOOK TEST #0093: FLAMING BANANAS

INSTALLMENT #0093 (FREE) A ROADTRIP REPORT / BANANAS FLAMBEES

Dear Readers,

Another "off book" installment this week, owing to the fact that I've spent the past 14 days driving from Minnesota to Colorado to Utah to California to Santa Fe to Kansas City back to Minnesota again. I'll be back on my normal stride next Sunday (with a cookbook read, reviewed, and cooked from), but for now something a little lighter and more flammable.

You may or may not be shocked to hear that while traveling I made sure to eat well and take notes. The following (non-comprehensive!) list hits some of the highlights. I hope it’ll be of use to you, should you ever find yourself in the part of the country we visited - that is to say: most of the western United States.

CITRUS SUSHI | KYOTO IN SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH AND THE JOINT IN SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

So, this is a thing that I did not know was a thing: You take a stunt sushi roll (multiple kinds of fish, big and chonky, often some kind of sauce or tempura) and embed thinly sliced pieces of lemon in the exterior fish in order to give the roll a light, bright, citrus-kicked flavor. It's really pretty nice, and I'm surprised that it's not more of a standard offering wherever sushi is served.

PISTACHIO CHICKEN AT WILD THYME CAFE | KENAB, UTAH

A poblano cream sauce covered this pistachio-crusted chicken breast entree from the surprisingly refined Wild Thyme, a charming little outpost of a restaurant in the charming little outpost of a town that is Kenab, Utah.

ICED COCONUT AMERICANO AT BETTER BUZZ | LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA

This was one of the best coffee drinks I've ever had - and I think I remember correctly that Becca described it as her favorite ever. The Americano-ness of it all kept it from being too thick or cloying, and the coconut arrived via a house-made coconut syrup AND a bit of real toasted coconut for additional depth. Just a divinely elegant coffee drink.

BREADS AND SPREADS AT ESTHER'S KITCHEN | LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

Order "The Chef's Spread with All of the Things" at Esther's Kitchen and you get warm housemade sourdough bread plus basil ricotta, blue cheese with pecans and pickled grapes, a beet conserva, nduja, burrata, anchovy butter, cannellini beans, and chicken liver and foie gras with strawberry. It's a pretty absurd feast, and it's just an appetizer, so tread lightly if you can.

DATE SHAKE FROM CIMA MINING COMPANY | NIPTON, CALIFORNIA

I'd never tried a date shake before this trip, but Becca and I have a couple globetrotting friends who get out to Palm Springs fairly often and make date shake hunting into a sport.

Cima Mining Company claims to serve the best date shake in the world, and I wouldn't know - it's the only date shake I've tried. But I thought it was superb - little chewy bits of natural, locally grown sweetness scattered almost like boba pearls throughout a classic vanilla milkshake. Just superb.

This all brings me to a meal we had - and a dish we didn't have - at a Tex-Mex place in Temecula, California. The food was unremarkable, but came in such mammoth portions that we didn't get around to ordering the restaurant's intriguing-looking Bananas Foster for dessert.

I am a sucker for anything prepared tableside, and a sucker for anything actively on fire. So when we finally staggered back to Minneapolis on Thursday night, I resolved to prepare some sort of flaming banana something for the kids and myself.

I ended up dipping back into Recipes and Reminiscences of New Orleans, a rare U-turn into a book I've already read and reviewed. Since this is New Orleans, the book offers not one but TWO bananas-on-fire options: Bananas Flambees (baked, dark rum, lots of butter) and Bananas Foster (sauteed, cinnamon-kissed, white rum and banana liqueur.)

I went with Bananas Flambees - it seemed like a more substantial recipe, was reputedly brought to Louisiana by a relative of Empress Josephine, and involved a lot more butter. The one thing that I liked about Bananas Foster (the addition of cinnamon) was easy enough to move over into my slightly adapted recipe, which also includes a "come on, this should be obvious" call to chefs to include vanilla ice cream when it comes time to serve.

Beyond the cinnamon and ice cream, I also wound up halving the sugar from the original recipe (a full cup of sugar for three bananas is nuts; I honestly could've taken it down to 1/4 cup without doing much damage). So here it is:

BANANAS FLAMBEES

3 bananas, peeled, split lengthwise, and cut in half
3 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1 tsp cinnamon
2 ounces dark rum
Vanilla ice cream to serve

Preheat oven to 325 F. Place bananas in an ovenproof baking dish and dot with butter. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Bake uncovered for 35 minutes. Set dish on stove on low heat, and heat your dark rum in a small saute pan over medium heat until quite warm. Just before you pour the rum over your bananas, ignite with a match or long lighter. Let the flames burn for 15-30 seconds, and cover pan to extinguish if you'd like to retain some rum flavor. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.