Bananas: ripe for success

Chefs across the country are monkeying around with bananas, a relative newcomer to our culinary history.

Although the tropical fruit is currently a top banana, it didn't appear in many U.S. kitchens until the late 1800s.But the first printed recipe found by Hess was published in an 1868 cookbook by Pierre Blot. By 1883, which was when "Mrs. Lincoln's Cookbook" was published, bananas were being prepared in a variety of ways. This cookbook has six banana recipes.It was in 1948 or 1949, she couldn't remember when exactly, when her brother Owen asked her to come up with a "great" dessert for their menu at Brennan's on Royal Street in New Orleans."I've noticed warm banana tarts on New York menus everywhere I ate," says Hamersley after a recent restaurant tour of Gotham.Banana creations recently peeled out vary from a $7 house-made banana split topped with two chocolate sauces and spun sugar to a blow-torch-browned banana walnut tart."The beautiful thing about bananas is they are available year round," says Jamie Shannon, executive chef of Commander's Palace in New Orleans. He offers classic banana Foster and banana Foster shortcake."The first time I showed it to my brother, he said: 'It's so damn Walgreen's. Why is it served over ice cream?'"Leach assembles banana rhubarb strudel, $7.50, at the newly reopened One Fifth Avenue. He layers banana bread, sliced bananas and rhubarb puree and wraps the layers in phyllo dough to form a puck shape. After the strudel is baked, Leach halves the warm dessert and presents it topped with rhubarb sauce, a small glazed banana tart and a scoop of rhubarb sorbet.Hess concludes that by the turn of the century bananas were "beginning to take off a little" since Fanny Farmer's book included nine banana preparations, and ordinary cookbooks, our culinary history books, were beginning to mention the fruit.Two years later the "Buckeye Cookery," published in Minnesota, included fried and baked banana recipes, proving that bananas were being served on Midwestern tables.Bananas were still considered exotic in 1876 when they were sold for a dime apiece at the Philadelphia Centennial celebration, according to research dug up by culinary historian Karen Hess. She reports that by 1846 there were shipments of bananas arriving in New York City.Taylor also accompanies Caribbean jerked pork sandwich with fried plantains and banana chutney made with bananas, honey, lemon juice, red bell peppers and serrano peppers, $8.25.Rich banana ice-cream cake is molded in a triangular mold and drizzled with chocolate at Manhattan's Restaurant Lafayette at the Drake Swissotel.For the shortcake, banana puree is added to the biscuit batter, which is baked to order. Both Foster desserts are sold for $5.50.Hess notes that bananas entered upscale commerical kitchens before the turn of the century. Indeed, maitre d'hotel Oscar Tschirky of New York City's Waldorf-Astoria included a banana recipe in his mammoth 900-page cookbook, published in 1896. The recipe was baked bananas, topped with butter, sprinkled with sugar and baked for 20 minutes or until glazed. Oscar suggested serving baked bananas with cake and milk."What happened was my mother loved bananas, and she used to saute them in brown sugar and butter. We all loved bananas. So we just started messing around with it and added some cinnamon, rum and banana liqueur and served it over ice cream.In Boston, Gordon Hamersley serves rumflamed warm banana tart at his namesake restaurant. According to him, "Bananas that are slightly green on the tips respond best" for his preparation. He cooks bananas with butter and sugar and then flames them with brown rum. He lays the cooked bananas in uncooked pie shells and bakes them for about 15 minutes. The pie is drizzled with burnt caramel sauce made with butter, cream and rum. It sells for $6.50.At New York City-based Banana Cafe, bananas are appropriately featured on the dessert menu. Banana Cafe's banana split includes flourless chocolate cake, macadamia nut praline, Tahitian vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream, topped with spun sugar; fresh fruit, such as raspberries; white chocolate sauce; and bitter chocolate sauce, $7."Everybody can relate to bananas," says Richard Leach, pastry chef of Manhattan's One Fifth Avenue. "They are a common fruit, and the quality of bananas is pretty steady. You can smell when they are ripe. They are very aromatic and are yellow with a little brown. Bananas are less seasonal than other fruits, like cherries."In Denver, at Zenith American Grill, Chef Kevin Taylor serves warm banana walnut tart filled with caramelized goat's milk and topped with banana slices, sprinkled with sugar and then browned with a blowtorch, $4.75.But it wasn't until this century, about 1920, that banana cream pie came of age, according to Hess.Ella Brennan tells the story of another U.S.-born banana dessert, bananas Foster.

"The first time I showed it to my brother, he said: 'It's so damn Walgreen's. Why is it served over ice cream?'"