Instructions: Melt the butter over an alcohol burner in a flambe pan or attractive skillet. Add the sugar, cinnamon and the banana liqueur and stir to mix.

Heat for a few minutes and place the halved bananas in the sauce and saute until soft and slightly browned. Add the rum and allow it to heat well; then tip the pan so that the flame from the burner causes the sauce to light. First lift the bananas carefully out of the pan and place four pieces over each portion of ice cream and spoon the hot sauce from the pan over the top.

Serves four.

Note: This can also be prepared over a stove burner and then brought to the dinner table and flamed.

In case youre interested: This flamed dessert was invented at Brennans in the 1950s when the restaurants founder, Owen E. Brennan Sr., wanted to find a new way to use bananas. New Orleans was the major port of entry for bananas shipped from Central America and South America and Brennan wanted to promote the plentiful fruit. He challenged his chef, Paul Blange, to create an interesting dish.

The dish, made of bananas and rum and served over vanilla ice cream, was named for Brennans friend, Richard Foster, who owned the Foster Awning Company and served as vice chairman of the citys Vice Committee in charge of cleaning up the French Quarter. Foster was a frequent diner at Brennans and the owner thought it fitting to name the new dish in his honor.

Today the dessert is the most requested item on the menu of the famous French Quarter restaurant, which serves 35,000 pounds of bananas each year.

Now, this local discovery is found on menus throughout the world.

/FRUIT

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