Hot, cold, sweet, salty, boozy, spiced: Bananas Foster has everything

I’m a sucker for a challenge. I absolutely cannot resist a little competition. Throw down a gauntlet, and I am compelled to pick it up.

That’s probably one of the reasons that I love bananas Foster so much: it owes its existence to a challenge. In the 1950s, New Orleans was a major port of entry for bananas shipped from Latin America. Owen Brennan, owner of the eponymous French-Creole restaurant Brennan’s, was no fool: his brother Joe’s produce firm, Brennan’s Processed Potato Company, was running a large surplus of bananas and he wanted to make the most of these readily available fruit.

He challenged one of his chefs to come up with a banana dish that could be served at his restaurant. So the chef Paul Blangé (working with Owen’s sister Ella, who later took over the restaurant, and was largely responsible for its subsequent success) set about recreating a dish that the Brennans’ mother used to make in the family home.