Going Bananas

Last Monday was the Early Spring Bank Holiday. This is to cover for the 1st May celebrations in other countries. Lundulph and I had a lot of DIY on the agenda, but decided to also have our first barbecue of the year.

I bought suitable vegetables - courgettes, bell peppers, aubergines and green chillies. And for Lundulph bamboo skewers with tiger prawns and a packet of scallops - he's been asking for these for ages. For myself, I don't eat seafood voluntarily, so I took out a packet of Frankfurters from the freezer - part of my emergency food collection. As I was wandering around the shop, I got the idea of putting bananas on the barbie as well, so I bought 4 - two to be done in their skin and two to be done in tin foil.

The peppers, aubergines and chillies were of course to be roasted to make kyopoolu and pickled roasted chillies.

I also bought a big packet of very nice looking button mushrooms and wild rocket, both of which I managed to forget in the fridge.

We originally planned to do the barbie on the Sunday, but due to various planning issues, this didn't happen. But Monday came and seemed decent enough despite being a bit overcast. Lundulph dug out our old rusty barbecue from under the jungle that now thrives where we plan to have our patio. Cleaned it up nicely and fired it up, while I prepared the food. I skewered the scallops on as well and cut the courgettes in fairly thin long slices.



The advantage with our tiny barbecue is that it's perfect for the two of us and Lundulph has now mastered the art of building it up properly and getting it to light up as it should.


Our Mr Blackbird came very close to inspect what we were up to, but he didn't like the piece of scallop that Lundulph gave him.

Needless to say, we had a very nice barbecue and also got the kyopoolu ingredients done and got to use Lundulph's barbecue wok for the chillies. It was a bit chilly and the wind started picking up, but we quite enjoyed ourselves, even opening up a bottle of bubbly.



As the final thing, I put on the four bananas - two in their skin and two peeled and wrapped in individual packets of foil. The skin bananas went black and I turned them to get the blackness on all sides. Didn't touch the foiled ones though. Once the skins were black through and through, I decided they were ready and Lundulph and I had one each. They were hot and gooey inside and I thought that it would be nice with a bit of sugar of some sort, they weren't that sweet. We ended up pouring maple syrup on them and that just worked perfectly.



We then moved on to the bananas in the foil. Because I hadn't turned the, they'd caramelised on the bottom and not in a bad way at all, on the contrary - it was just enough to give a bit extra sweetness and flavour and a bit of crispiness. These definitely won on account of taste and worked very nicely with the maple syrup as well. In fact Lundulph came up with a number of suggestions to try out next time - coat the banana with sugar or honey before wrapping in the foil, to give even more caramelisation. Or cutting along the length and putting bits of chocolate inside.

Looks-wise, the bananas in their skins were better. I'm sure this idea is not in any way unique, but I've never thought of barbecuing bananas before and I've never come across this concept before.



All in all, it made the perfect barbecue dessert. Next time must also try with ice cream...