cooking

Today, my brother has agreed to be a guest columnist, which I am just so excited about!!!

Ed's Banana Compote-

2 days ago my good friend Scott had about 30lbs. of bananas that were going bad. So what to do when you are offered about 25 bananas that have a shelf life of 48 hours? First I peeled and froze ½ of them, another 5 went into a nice banana bread. This left me with about 7 or 8 bananas. In searching through my collection of cookbooks, I came across this recipe in The Culinary Arts Encyclopedia of Cooking 1987 and made a few changes. The Culinary Arts Encyclopedia of Cooking is a must have in any kitchen. I picked up mine for $2 at Goodwill. Some years are probably better then others, but with over 4,000 recipes, I have some time to get there.

Ingredients:
1 cup water
½ cup sugar
½ cup Apricot Jam
¼ cup unsalted butter
1 teaspoons cinnamon (optional)
6 ripe Bananas (sliced into ¼ inch rounds)

Prepare the Apricot Sauce: Dissolve ½ cup of sugar in 1 cup of water over medium heat. Add ½ cup Apricot Jam and stir until the sauce becomes thick. Go for the consistency of maple syrup, not caramel. When finished, set aside.

Cook the Bananas: In a large skillet, melt ¼ cup unsalted butter on medium heat. Add 1 teaspoons cinnamon if you are a cinnamon lover. Cover the entire bottom of your pan with banana slices. You will not be flipping the bananas so you can really pack them in there. The original recipe says cook until the edges of the banana start to turn brown. The challenge with this is getting the bananas to brown without having the butter start burning. I waited until the bananas turned gold, almost looking super ripe.

Combine: Pour the Apricot Sauce evenly over the top of the bananas. Turn the heat to high. Cook for 5 minuets uncovered and then about 3 minutes covered. The idea is to release enough steam that the sauce and bananas together look thick, and not watery.

Set: Pour the mix into your favorite glass or ceramic bowl

Chill: Place in the fridge, allowing the compote to chill and set. (I waited 24 hours here, but I think you can get away with 6, 4 in a rush

Present: Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream to soften the flavor, garnish with some frozen blueberries and strawberries.