Bananas Foster. Sometimes dinner looks like dessert.
I decided that flambé is BUNK !
Purely for showmanship and there is nobody around to show off to, so a step that goes "poof" and that's the end of that. I think flambés were big in the 60's but I have no real way to know for sure. That was back in the days when it was believed most of the alcohol is burned off. This is wrong. The alcohol is always mostly still there by 70%.
On an episode of Restaurant Impossible, Robert Irvine teaches a crew how to make bananas Foster. Robert's version calls for two sauces, one to cook the bananas and another similar sauce to pour over the final product. I cannot see the need for that. This approach is just a way to get two alcohols into a flavored caramel.
* banana liqueur
* rum
You melt yourself some sugar, in this case, brown sugar and refined white cane sugar. Sugar melts irregularly in patches spread out there on the bottom of a pan. It is fascinating to watch. The liquid sugar portion may darken faster than the unmelted portion so the process might need to be halted before all the sugar actually melts. The process is arrested by the addition of cream which boils away at temperature lower than it takes to melt sugar so arresting the process is violent and exciting. Then those alcohols ↑ are added, the pan tipped to the flame, and poof there is a lovely fire while all that ↓ is shaken together.
* cream
* butter
* cinnamon
* ginger (impulse addition)
* pinch of salt
Update: Here is an example of a situation that makes me go, "Wut? Did that just happen?" There is no logical place to sort this so I will file it under "M" for,
"Man, oh man, these coincidences sure can be coincidental sometimes."
I made a version of bananas Foster. Photographed the finished plate. Ate the ice cream, bananas, and sauce. Resized and adjusted the photos. Uploaded photos. Wrote a brief post on bananas Foster. Solved crossword puzzle that featured bananas Foster.
Is that last bit funny or spooky?
The puzzle came from a file of puzzles in this format. Now the format has changed and so has the situation with the free puzzles, so when these are gone, that's it, there is no replacement. So I pick one randomly, thus diminishing the file of puzzles. It says "Sunday Challenge" so naturally a difficult puzzle is expected. I notice large open corners and an open cross in the center. Those are good signs for a serious un-themed puzzle. I am familiar with the constructor from previous puzzles and from the crossword convention web site. These things are usually bears. As it turns out, this one is not. I got "American History" from its three first letters and an unhelpful clue that refers to the other answer within the puzzle that runs all the way across and forms the shape of a cross with this answer, so that is the nearest this puzzle will come to anything so much as a theme. That the two clues are self-referential means the across answer will have something to do with American History and that is a very helpful clue to have, much better than the two clues provided which simply refer to each other. John Quincy Adams formed up with just two starting letters. From my point of view the puzzle is not difficult, in fact the opposite, so nothing close to challenging. Now you could probably go, "Well, maybe you got lucky this time like you did on the CLEP tests, and just happened to know the stuff they are asking." And I would see the wisdom in that stance and not be tempted to argue because, after all, how many letters do you imagine were needed for "ice cream" to solve this bananas Foster ingredient clue?
Update: Here is an example of a situation that makes me go, "Wut? Did that just happen?" There is no logical place to sort this so I will file it under "M" for,
"Man, oh man, these coincidences sure can be coincidental sometimes."
I made a version of bananas Foster. Photographed the finished plate. Ate the ice cream, bananas, and sauce. Resized and adjusted the photos. Uploaded photos. Wrote a brief post on bananas Foster. Solved crossword puzzle that featured bananas Foster.
Is that last bit funny or spooky?
The puzzle came from a file of puzzles in this format. Now the format has changed and so has the situation with the free puzzles, so when these are gone, that's it, there is no replacement. So I pick one randomly, thus diminishing the file of puzzles. It says "Sunday Challenge" so naturally a difficult puzzle is expected. I notice large open corners and an open cross in the center. Those are good signs for a serious un-themed puzzle. I am familiar with the constructor from previous puzzles and from the crossword convention web site. These things are usually bears. As it turns out, this one is not. I got "American History" from its three first letters and an unhelpful clue that refers to the other answer within the puzzle that runs all the way across and forms the shape of a cross with this answer, so that is the nearest this puzzle will come to anything so much as a theme. That the two clues are self-referential means the across answer will have something to do with American History and that is a very helpful clue to have, much better than the two clues provided which simply refer to each other. John Quincy Adams formed up with just two starting letters. From my point of view the puzzle is not difficult, in fact the opposite, so nothing close to challenging. Now you could probably go, "Well, maybe you got lucky this time like you did on the CLEP tests, and just happened to know the stuff they are asking." And I would see the wisdom in that stance and not be tempted to argue because, after all, how many letters do you imagine were needed for "ice cream" to solve this bananas Foster ingredient clue?
No comments:
Post a Comment