New Orleans Grilled Bananas Foster with Rum Caramel and Vanilla Ice Cream

Heat a grill or griddle pan to medium-high. Leaving the skins on keeps the bananas from falling apart on the grate.

Ingredients

• Serves 4:
• 4 firm bananas, halved lengthwise (skin on)
• For the rum caramel:
• 60g butter
• 100g dark brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3 tbsp dark rum
• Pinch of flaky salt
• To serve:
• Vanilla ice cream
• Handful pecans, toasted and chopped

Instructions

1. Heat a grill or griddle pan to medium-high. Leaving the skins on keeps the bananas from falling apart on the grate.
2. Lay the bananas cut-side down and grill for 2-3 minutes until deep caramelised grill-marks form, then flip onto the skin side for another 2 minutes until soft and warm through.
3. Meanwhile make the caramel: melt the butter in a pan over medium heat, stir in the brown sugar and cinnamon and cook for 2-3 minutes until bubbling and glossy.
4. Carefully add the rum (stand back — it may flame) and let it bubble for a minute to cook off the raw alcohol and thicken into a sauce. Add a pinch of salt.
5. Slip the grilled bananas out of their skins and arrange in shallow bowls.
6. Spoon the warm rum caramel generously over the top.
7. Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream alongside so it begins to melt into the warm sauce.
8. Scatter with toasted pecans and serve at once, while warm and dramatic.
9. Bananas Foster was born in New Orleans in 1951 at the legendary Brennan's restaurant, created to show off the bananas pouring into the port of New Orleans and named for a local civic leader, Richard Foster. Traditionally the bananas are flambeed tableside in a rum-and-brown-sugar caramel, a little piece of theatre that has never gone out of style. This version takes it to the grill — charring the fruit first to deepen its sweetness and add a smoky edge perfect for a summer cookout — before bathing it in that same buttery rum caramel and melting it over cold vanilla ice cream. Warm, boozy, smoky and sweet, it is the South's most glamorous way with a banana.