Sunday, August 15, 2010

Bacon Wrapped Bananas with Chocolate Sauce

And doesn't that just sound AWESOMELY delicious? I know it does "it" for me! Seriously, what dish can't be improved by adding bacon?

I got the idea for this from a yoga teacher in New Zealand who has a cool food blog called Couscous & Consciousness. In one of her posts she asked folks about what trio or trios of food combination go well together. One of the ones I mentioned was bacon wrapped chocolate that gets battered and deep-fried. She thought it sounded ok but suggested some with bananas to go along with the bacon and chocolate.

Hence, this beauty of a recipe was born!

I made it last night, we all loved it. And that includes BIL who has a very fussy palate. In fact, he licked the plate clean!

Dingo Dave's Original Bacon Wrapped Bananas with Chocolate sauce with thanks to Couscous & Consciousness for inspiration.

What you need:

For the bananas and bacon:
One banana per person
1 to 3 slices of bacon per banana depending on size of slice

For the chocolate sauce:
175 grams of dark chocolate --that's 6.141592654 or pi+3 ounces
2 heaping tbsp butter
1/3 cup cream
1/4 cup cream port (or regular port, or a sherry variety)
1/4 tsp cinnamon powder
1/8 tsp cayenne powder (I usually double or triple this, but that's for when it's just me)

What you do:

Put everything for the chocolate sauce in a small, thick-bottomed saucepan. Your saucepan should now look like this:
stuff for chocolate sauce



Put the saucepan on the lowest heat possible and stir or whisk it while it heats. Make sure nothing sticks to the bottom and that it's well mixed. This should only take a couple of minutes.

Turn the heat off and cover it.

Now to assemble the bacon and bananas. Ummmmmm, this is pretty simple, just wrap the bacon around the bananas. If you need to secure the bacon with toothpicks the go for it.
bacon wrapped bananas raw



Then cook them till the bacon is done to your liking. Be gentle when turning them as you don't want to bananas to break apart.
bacon wrapped bananas cooked



Remove the toothpicks if you used them and liberally ladle the sauce on top!
bacon wrapped bananas with chocolate sauce
Notice how I used one dark plate and one light plate so that the color balance in the photo is way off? Yeah, I did that on purpose. Maybe.

And the obligatory closeup:
bacon wrapped bananas with chocolate sauce closeup



Use a sharp knife and a fork for eating. Why a sharp knife? So that you don't mush down the banana as you cut a piece.

You'll have lots of leftover sauce, I'm sure you'll think of some use for it.

Oh, next time I'm going to roll the bananas in brown sugar before wrapping the bacon around them!

2 comments:

Couscous & Consciousness said...

Dave - looks like you had real fun with that one - cayenne pepper in the chocolate sauce sounds great - good to have some leftovers. I'm exploring the idea of an ice-cream - maybe a banana/chocolate chip ice-cream with shards of candied bacon, or maybe a banana/bacon ice-cream with chocolate sauce. It's going to be a project next weekend to play around with it.
Thanks for the "shout out" by the way.
Your fennel & prawn risotto looks great too.
Sue

Alaskan Dave Down Under said...

Sue: Well, I think the trio of ingredients were your idea; gots to give credit where credit is due. I think the banana/bacon ice cream with chocolate sauce sounds great. Hmmm, candying bacon... I'd have never thought of it!