I promised I’d write a post about all the different ways we have been preparing bananas and plantains, so here it is! A photolog of our banana inventions. I didn’t follow any recipes here, just general directions and crazy ideas, but they worked! If you happen to have tons of bananas and plantains these preparations are great because some require ripe fruits and others unripe, that way (hopefully) you don’t waste any!
Pizza! Well, it’s the closest we have gotten to having pizza here at La Iguana. We save our flour for baking bread and chocolate goodies to sell, so we would never make pizza dough. One day I took boiled, green bananas, mashed them, pressed them out onto an oiled cookie sheet, baked it, then spread bean dip, tomatoes, oregano and cheese on top and baked again. It’s delicious!
Banana brownies: we run out of eggs here very often and ripe bananas are a great replacement. ½ a large banana=1 egg. It does change the texture and taste of the brownies, but I like chocolate and bananas. I even blended peanuts, bananas, sugar and oil to make a peanut butter banana cream to spread on top. They had to be consumed immediately though!
Plantain chips: using green plantains sliced thin in a food processor and fried in abundant oil. We season with salt and limon and serve with bean dip (mashed, seasoned, cooked black beans) and guacamole.
Frozen bananas: probably my favorite way to preserve and prepare ripe bananas because it’s so easy and delicious, you just has to peel them. When bananas are frozen they taste and feel like ice cream! I eat them with granola or chocolate sauce.
Chocolate banana cream pie: I made this for Thanksgiving and it was a huge hit. I ran in to so many ingredient constraints as I was trying to follow Mark Bittman’s recipe for banana cream pie. I didn’t have butter for the crust, didn’t have enough eggs to split them and just use yolks, didn’t have any prepared and sweetened chocolate, didn’t have any cream and ran out of milk! I substituted solidified vegetable oil, whole eggs, pure ground cacao, and kefir, but it worked! There was, I couldn’t believe it, a little white chocolate for the decoration!