The Banana Split.... Deconstructed. A Light Variation On A Classic.

    
   This is a post about Banana Splits and a confession. I have to be thoroughly honest here and say that I'm not an expert on banana splits. In fact I've never eaten a banana split. It's not that they haven't looked good, and I'm sure they taste great, it's just that they've always appeared so daunting to me. The giant curve of banana, the tons of whipped cream, ice cream, different syrups, nuts and cherries. The reason I never started eating a banana split is mainly because I knew I'd never make it out alive.

   The other thing about Banana Splits is that they've always seemed to be a "date dessert," a real retro Archie and Veronica thing. The sort of dessert that would be on the table between Gidget and Moondoggy in some old movie. Not that Jonah Hill wouldn't be caught dead eating one, it just wouldn't be on-screen, and maybe it wouldn't even be eating.

    Then I read about Kelly Ripas' Build A Banana Split For Ovarian Cancer Research Contest, and I saw all the wonderful Banana Splits that my fellow Foodbloggers created, and I was hooked. The world of Banana Splits was opened to me and of course I wanted to contribute to this great cause. The question was, how?

    I've never seen an Indian version of the Banana Split. Of course there are Indian desserts that feature bananas, there are dishes that feature plantains and there are many, many, many Indian sweets. I knew that if I wanted to make a Banana Split it would have to have Indian flavors and be suitable for serving after an elaborate Indian dinner.  I figured that in order to make my split I ought to break down the components, toss the ones that didn't work, keep the ones that did, and hopefully come out with a Banana Split with an Indian twist.

   Number 1 was Bananas..no way around that. They were a keeper. For a moment I considered Plantains but decided to go the purist route.

  Number 2 was ice cream. Banana Splits use scoops of ice cream, sometimes the same flavor, sometimes a mix of flavors. I decided in the name of simplicity to stick with one flavor, so I created a Rose Lassi Ice Cream.

  Number 3 was whipped cream and here Alan and I had a disagreement. He wanted whipped cream. I thought the whipped cream would be too sweet and somehow "wrong" so I started draining yogurt for sirkhand, a type of sweetened thickened Indian version of creme fraiche.

   Number 4 was nuts.. (which was what I started to think I was cooking this up). Indian desserts often feature pistachios, so they were a lock.

    I also decided that I wanted to make the dish elegant, or as elegant as I could. I decided on a deconstructed Banana Split served almost as a dessert amuse bouche.

Banana Split Indian Style

Here's what I did:
 
Start with The Banana Part. 
Get 3 bananas. Cut them in rounds.

 In a deep skillet or kadhai, heat about 4 Tbs of unsalted butter.
When the butter melts add in about 4 Tbs of Indian jaggery or if you haven't got that, dark brown sugar.

When the sugar has dissolved in the butter, toss in the banana pieces and coat them well.

When the bananas are cooked and glossy (this only takes a few minutes) add in 1/2 cup of grated unsweetened coconut.
I've been lucky enough to score a sample of Tropical Traditions Organic Shredded Coconut and so I used that.

  Wheeeee! Here it goes.

Blend it in well, then take the bananas off the heat and set them aside to cool.

 
Now on to The Ice Cream Part.
I decided a Sweet Lassi Rose Ice Cream would be great with the bananas. This is what I did.
In a large bowl mix:
 3/4 cup of sugar
 2 cups of buttermilk
Whisk it together well until the sugar is blended in then add in:
 2 cups of whipping cream
 1 tsp of rose water
 a pinch of kosher salt.
Pour everything into an ice cream maker and process as usual. Put it into the freezer until you're ready.

Now for the Sirkhand.
Take a cup of yogurt and place it in a yogurt strainer suspended over a glass. Let it drain for at least 4 hours, or until it's slightly thickened. Mix in a bit of powdered sugar to sweeten it slightly.

Putting It All Together.
This took some thought. I tried it a few different ways, (of course I had to sample the various versions) and finally at Alan's suggestion I found the way that worked.
 This is it.
 I had several grappa glasses, small, slender glasses just a fit for an iced tea spoon.
 I stacked my fillings into the glasses.
  1.) On the bottom a bit of sirkhand for a slightly tartish( is that a word?) finish.
  2.) next a sprinkling of finely chopped pistachio nuts
  3.) 3 rounds of the cooked coconut coated bananas
  4.) 2  rounds of Sweet Rose Lassi Ice Cream
  5.)  A small sprinkle of chopped pistachio nuts

   There it is. When a spoon is dipped in one gets all the flavors of a banana split, without the traditional shape. With the butter and coconut and jaggery flavor, a small dessert goes a long way. It's rich but not heavy, and Alan reports that no weight was gained in the consumption of this Banana Split, but full pleasure was experienced. A win/win.

   So there it is, my version of a Banana Split. If you'd like to make a virtual Banana Split yourself, visit Kelly Ripas' website and create one. For each Banana Split that's made, $1.00 is donated to Ovarian Cancer research, and there are other goodies for you virtual splitters too, so surf on over and check it out.

The Chess Players... and The Chicken. Spring Forward Version

 My husband loves chess. he loves to read about it, talk about it, study it but most of all he loves to play. Growing up in New York he played at the Manhattan Chess Club. When we lived in Los Angeles he was a member of the Santa Monica Chess Club and played there regularly. Since moving full time to Sonoma a few years ago he hasn't had anyone to play chess with so he was delighted when Andy the owner of our local book store Readers Books said that he played chess.

  
A date was set immediately.  After a bit of negotiation as to where the game would be played, (Andy's store versus our house) it was decided that ours would be the quieter venue. Always looking for a chance to test a recipe on someone, I offered to make it a chess players' lunch.

   At the time I made this offer, I'd forgotten that this weekend was the weekend that we set the clocks forward and leapt into Daylight Savings. Not my favorite time of year. In other words I wound up going to bed last night at about 3 a.m. Normally I'm up at 7. The last thing I wanted to do at 7 a.m this morning was cook a big Indian lunch. I wanted to sleep.
  Fortunately the dish I was experimenting with suited my plans perfectly.
  I had planned to cook a whole spiced chicken marinated and wrapped in a banana leaf.

This turned out to be ideal, since the chicken had been marinated the afternoon before I realized that the time was about to change. All I had to do this afternoon was heat up the oven and gift wrap my bird. Add some rice, chapattis and a couple of veg sides and I was done. I had planned to try a new dessert (to me) that I'd gotten from my friend at  Niyas World, but while running around grocery shopping yesterday our car battery died and it threw me into a state of utter confusion. Dessert plans flew out the window. I figured I'd have to try the new dessert another time. For now I'd throw some boxed, store-bought cookies at the chess players. That would be good enough for them.
   Cooking things in banana leaves is a very old technique, it protects and gently steams the food and adds a nice flavor and aroma to whatever one is cooking.
  The first time I went looking for banana leaves I was shocked at the price. Online one place wanted about 15 bucks for one pack and that didn't include postage. A quick search of my local Hispanic market showed me that  I could get the same package there for $1.50 in the frozen  section.
  Simply put,  I love dishes that I can assemble the day ahead with minimal effort and then just shove into the oven on cooking day. This is especially appreciated when stuff like car batteries happen and everything goes kabluey!
   So here is how to do this simple and delicious  
         Banana Wrapped Chicken.
    Start off with 1 Chicken ideally from 4.6 lbs to 5 pounds.
     Preparing the Chicken
   Rinse the chicken and dry it well then poke it all over so that the marinade can get through to the meat.
Rub the chicken with :
  3 Tbs of Lemon juice
  1 tsp of salt
             Making the Marinade
1.) In a heavy frying pan or skillet heat 1 Tbs vegetable oil
   When it's hot, toss in:
2.) 2 onions peeled and roughly chopped
  Stir them around and fry them until the onions start to brown. Then add in:
3.) 4 garlic cloves or shallots crushed
4.) 1 and 1/2 inch piece of fresh ginger peeled and chopped
   Cook for an additional 2 minutes or so then add in:
5.) 3 Tbs of ground almonds
6.) 1/2 tsp Kashmiri chili or (1/4 tsp cayenne mixed with 1/4 tsp paprika)
7.)  1 tsp turmeric
8.) 2 tsp garam masala
   Cook for an additional minute, then let the onion spice mixture cool totally.
   When it's all cooled off, put the mixture into a blender or food processor along with
9.) 5 tsp of chopped fresh cilantro
  Turn it all into a smooth paste.
  Rub the paste all over the chicken both inside the cavity and outside, then cover the bird and tuck it in the fridge for at least 6 hours or overnight.
  Once this is done you can forget about the chicken and deal with anything that might rear it's ugly head.  Stuff like busted batteries and cell phones that are dead because your husband has been taking pictures of you in reflective surfaces all afternoon practicing his "technique".

  Our friend Bruce Needleman owner of Salsa Trading Company and me the Head in the Bottle at his store
  Actually the thing that saved our butt was Foursquare, the new app on our iPhone . Because of this nifty little app I was able to see that our friend Chip happened to be shopping in the Sonoma Market  where our car was sitting dead in the parking lot. He also had a working iPhone because he had not been out taking pictures all afternoon running down the battery. He was able to help us out by calling AAA for a tow truck and then giving me a lift home so that Patsy could get out and attend to her "business". But, back to the chicken.
    Wrapping and Cooking
  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
    Soften the banana leaves by soaking them in hot water to limber them up, then dry them off.
    Tie the legs of the chicken together  then wrap the fowl in green leafiness. If you don't have or can't get banana leaves, you can use foil to wrap the bird.

 

    Place the wrapped chicken in a roasting pan, place the pan in the oven for 1 and 1/2 hours.
After 1 and 1/2 hours take out the bird and open up its' little banana leaf gown.

 Put the bird back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so till it's nice and well browned.

   I served this chicken to my players with a nice raita, curried eggplant and potatoes, mustard seed rice, a jar of my apricot chutney, chapattis and a Gujarati carrot salad.

 The guys played chess for a couple of hours. Alan drew the first game and then won the second game. I withdrew to our office leaving them with a pot of chai and some "store-bought" cookies.
  So the Sonoma Traveling Chess club is established, next stop I'm informed is Andys' house and they'll be playing Go. Go figure.

Here's Where I Go Food Ninja Bananas

    Have you ever gone shopping and found yourself buying something, bringing it home sticking it in the closet and just keeping it there? Have you ever had one of those "what was I thinking?!" moments, where you wondered what the hell you were thinking when you bought something in "tangerine"???
Well, yes I've been guilty of all those crimes. To be practical one can always buy a sweater, get it home and then stick it in the back of the closet. Sooner or later you WILL wear that sweater, if not from boredom or necessity than from guilt.
I also have a bad habit of doing this with food..mainly vegetables and fruit. Now with vegetables and fruit you can't just put it away and wait for next season..because next season there will be new fruit, and in the meantime the old fruit will "go bad" and not a cute tough guy with a heart of gold kind of bad, but an oozy, sloppy, sticky goo kind of bad "from which bourn there is no return"..to totally muck up Shakespeare,and your fridge.
So, ok. I've got Goat in my fridge and a couple of ducks that I'm worried about, but the worst trouble I get into is with the more exotic members of the vegetable family.
Then there's that Banana Flower.
Ever since I brought it home full of bravado and high spirits last Sunday, it's been sitting in my fridge like a large, armored shell. A pretty pink and purple armored shell. Since I mentioned on this blog and to everyone I know that "Hey, I've got a banana flower and you don't!" I had to cook the damn thing. I'm not saying that I was afraid to cook it. I've cooked, plucked and gutted in my time if it didn't turn out so what..I could just chuck it. But, there was one other consideration and that is the other person in this house. My husband.
My husband has traveled the world. It's because of him and his family that I even started cooking Indian food in the first place. He's a very curious and daring eater, but I was worried if he'd be willing to go bananas with me. He was, on one condition. That there be no prawns. Having just seen District 9 and loving it, he wasn't exactly ready to face something that contained prawns. I explained that my prawns

would bear no resemblance to
those prawns,

It was no go. c
So I figured, let's go chicken. Chicken and banana flowers. Can't go wrong with that.
Well, I didn't, and it was easier and tastier than I thought.
First, cleaning the banana flower. There were all sorts of dire warnings. Beware sap, wear gloves. Again with the gloves! It was actually a lot easier than I'd read and there were no gloves involved. I got everything I needed to know by going onto the Internet Tubes and Googling Cleaning Banana Flower. There were a bunch of videos and websites. In fact, it was the same as cleaning an artichoke, peeling away leaves and unformed proto-bananas or bracts until one reaches the soft pale center, the "heart" of the banana.
Once your banana flower is peeled, cut off the tip and then the stem. Cut the heart in quarters and place it into a bowl of water with 1 tsp of salt and the juice of half a lemon. This will keep it from turning an unattractive color. It's similar to what's done with fresh artichoke. Set the banana flower and water aside to sit for about an hour.
I next thought about what chicken recipe would work with my Banana flower. I decided that a version of a Sri Lankan chicken in coconut milk from Mangoes And Curry Leaves would do beautifully.
1.) I took 2 Chicken breasts and cut them into inch pieces. This dish is usually made with bone in chicken but I find for convenience and what I happened to have
I dry roasted
2.) 1 Tbs of whole coriander seed
3.) 2 tsp. of cumin seed
4.) 1 Tbs. of dry grated coconut
5.) 3 Tbs of whole cashews
6.) 1/2 tsp of fenugreek seed
7.) 1 Tbs of uncooked basmati rice.
Dry roast all of these seeds and spices separately as the toast at different speeds and we don't want any burning.
When they're all toasted put them in a spice grinder or blender along with
8.) 1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon
9.) 1/2 tsp. of ground coriander
10.) and one chopped shallot
Blend all of this into a paste. Rub it on the chicken and let it sit in this paste in the fridge for 20 minutes to an hour or more..but at least for 20 minutes.

In a deep skillet or karahi heat
11.) 2 Tbs of vegetable oil..I used 1 Tbs of coconut oil
When the oil is hot toss in
12.) 2 finely minced green chilis
13.) 1/2 cup finely chopped shallot
14.) 1 tsp minced ginger
Stir fry it a bit then toss in your chicken in paste . Stir it up get that chicken a bit browned then add in
15.) 2 small chopped tomatoes.
Keep stir frying a bit more then add in
16.) 1/2 cup of coconut milk
17.) 1/2 cup of water
Put a cover on the pan, turn the heat down and simmer it well for about 40 minutes. Check it every now and then, add a bit more water if it seems to be sticking or turning dry.

Meanwhile back at the Banana Flower
After it's soaked for about an hour, drain it and place it in a pan, cover it with water add 1 tsp of salt and the juice of 1/2 lemon bring it all to a boil. It should take about 15 to 20 minutes for the banana to soften, when it does, take it out and drain it. Run a little water over it to cool. Then when it's cooked and drained , finely julienne it and toss it into your chicken dish. Stir it well till it's heated through and serve.

It is amazing!!! I am going to get more banana flowers, my next trip to market and avail myself of the many recipes out there. The Banana flowers are going to get a lot more use than that pair of Steve Madden leopard skin pumps I bought ever did. I may even get some prawns...or not.