“I love the gooey and textural aspect of this dish. Adding salt to the caramel just brings out the flavour.” A good-quality pre-rolled butter puff pastry such as Carême saves time without compromising flavour. If you don’t have a blowtorch, you can caramelise the bananas under a very hot grill.
Ingredients
Salted caramel
Method
Main
1.Preheat oven to 200C. Cut four 12cm rounds from pastry and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Score part-way through pastry to form a 1cm border, prick centre circle with a fork and brush all over with egg yolk. Freeze until firm (5 minutes), then bake until puffed and light golden
(6-8 minutes). Remove from oven, detach centre top layers of pastry (discard), return vol-au-vents to oven and bake until dark golden (6-8 minutes), set aside.
2.For salted caramel, cook sugar in a small saucepan over high heat until melted and dark caramel (4-5 minutes), add butter, swirl to combine, add half the cream (be careful, mixture may spit), stir until combined (1 minute). Add remaining cream, cook for another minute, add 3 tsp sea salt (or to taste) and cool to room temperature.
3.Place banana on a baking tray, scatter with sugar and caramelise with a blowtorch (2-3 minutes). Divide among pastry cases, fill with a little salted caramel, top with ice-cream and serve hot with extra salted caramel.
This recipe is from the February 2010 issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller.
Drink Suggestion: Hidalgo cream sherry. Drink suggestion by Liam O’Brien
Notes
