Caramelised banana and mascarpone "banoffee pie"
Ingredients
4 small sweet pastry tart shells (recipe to follow)
250g mascarpone
2 large bananas
Caramel sauce
Pistachio praline
Fresh raspberries
Chantilly cream
Crème Anglaise
Caramel sauce
375 g sweetened condensed milk
70g brown sugar
Method
Combine in a pot and gently heat to a simmer.
Continually stir as sauce will easily stick
Cool
Bananas
Cut bananas into batons
Sprinkle with caster sugar and caramelise with a blow torch until golden brown
Allow too cool
Alternately pan fry very quickly in a very hot nonstick pan
Pastry
250grams plain flour
100grams good cultured butter (cold)
100 grams icing sugar
1 organic free-range egg
half a vanilla pod scraped out.
One quarter of finely grated lemon rind
Combine all the dry ingredients with the butter and lemon rind.
Rub in with your fingers or use an electric mixer with a paddle or food processer.
Process until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Add eggs and carefully mix until the pastry just comes together. Be careful not to over work as this will cause the pastry to shrink in the oven.
Form in to a log and rest in the fridge for several hours.
Bring the pastry out and allow to slightly soften.
Roll out evenly on a floured work surface until it is around 3 to 5mm thick.
Line a 12 cm flan tin, trimming off the excess pastry.
Rest in the fridge or freezer for a least one hour.
Blind bake at 175 degrees until just cooked.
Pistachio praline
150 g raw pistachios
200g caster sugar
150g water
Method
Place pistachios on a baking tray with baking paper.
Place the sugar and water in a pot.
Bring to a boil over a medium heat stirring until the sugar is clear.
Cook until golden.
Pour over the pistachios as soon as the sugar is a golden honey colour.
Allow too cool.
Crush or blitz in a food processor.
Store in an air tight container.
For the chantilly cream
200 mls of pure cream
50g icing sugar
1 tsp of vanilla
Method
Whip cream to soft peaks.
Add icing sugar and vanilla.
Whisk until incorporated.
Vanilla anglaise
300ml of milk
3 egg yolks
30 g of caster sugar
1 tsp of vanilla
Method
Heat milk and vanilla in a pot.
Separate the eggs and place in a heat proof bowl.
Whisk in caster sugar.
Add on the warmed milk and whisk until the egg and sugar are well dissolved.
Return to pot and cook gently until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon, around 80-degree celsius. Make sure to constantly stir otherwise mixture will split.
Cool on ice.
Strain and store.
To serve
Place a dollop of mascarpone on each plate.
Gently pour on some vanilla anglaise.
Add the three fresh raspberries.
In the tart shell, half fill with the caramel and top with a little mascarpone.
Add the bananas.
Sprinkle with the pistachio praline.
Finish with quenelles of Chantilly cream.
