The weather in London has been very good indeed over the weekend. Sun, blue skies, and proper heat. Now for a little confession: whilst I love the sun and the blue skies, I’m not so much a fan of the heat that comes along with it. I flap at the thought of humidity/heat, and cannot bear the thought of life without the fan/airconditioning.
My British friends always find it odd that I can’t take the heat (I did grow up in a tropical ‘always summer’ country after all).. to which I respond: ‘We move from air conditioned house, to air conditioned car, to air conditioned building’. Though come to think of it we had no air conditioning in school, and we sometimes even wore baju kurung. Thinking back, I have no idea how on earth I managed that.
One of the ways I deal with the heat is by eating copious amounts of frozen desserts – ice cream, sorbet, gelato, granita… I’ll take them all, thank you very much. I used to stock my freezer with many tubs of store bought ice cream, but ever since I got my ice cream maker I prefer to make my own. Because let’s face it, I can’t walk into Waitrose and get Milo ice cream now can I?
I saw this recipe for roasted banana sorbet in the Eleven Madison Park cookbook, and was quite intrigued. For those of you who don’t know, Eleven Madison Park is a 3 Michelin star restaurant in New York, and is currently No 10 on the Worlds Top 50 restaurants. It is also one of my favourite restaurants, ever. I’d cooked a couple of pork dishes from the book prior to this which turned out well, so thought I’d give their sorbet recipe a try.
This turned out rather well, but because there wasn’t any cream/milk/butter/egg yolks in it the sorbet wasn’t super creamy like how ice cream/gelato is. I actually liked this, because it made it very light and refreshing. The flavour of banana is also intensified from the roasting.. in fact it reminded me of goreng pisang (deep fried battered bananas, a Malaysian snack).
What I might experiment with next time is to use milk in place of the water – I suspect this would make it slightly creamier, without needing to use cream or egg yolks. And maybe add a dash of condensed milk. Hmmmmm.
Photo taken with instagram
I topped the ice cream with some crushed peanut & sesame brittle – because I always need a little crunch to go with everything I eat. I’m obsessed with texture!
Do try this recipe out if you’re feeling a little hot and bothered, and feel like you need to cool down. It works, really! 🙂
Ah, the difficulties of photographing frozen desserts in warm weather…
Roasted banana sorbet
Adapted from the Eleven Madison Park cookbook
Makes 2 cups
- 4 ripe bananas
- 1/4 cup sugar (you may need more or less, depending on how sweet your bananas are)
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cups water
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
2. Peel the bananas. Place bananas in a large bowl, and add the water, sugar and salt.
3. Puree the banana mixture using a hand held blender, or food processor. If you wish, you can strain the mixture to ensure it is smooth. I choose not to do this as I like small banana chunks in my sorbet.
4. Add the lemon juice to the banana mixture. You may add less lemon juice if you prefer a sweeter sorbet.
5. Chill the banana mixture in the fridge for 3-4 hours, until it is thoroughly chilled.
6. Churn the mixture in an ice cream maker, according to the manufacturers instructions.
Bread et Butter 