Another question for Gardener

[Jean-Paul]

I have this idea for a healthy dessert, but wanted to see if you had any suggestions. I am thinking of sauteeing a banana in a little grapeseed oil (instead of butter) and D'anjou pear vinegar. Do you think that would work or do you think that the grapeseed oil wouldn't be a good medium in which to cook the banana. I have had fried plantanes before, and really liked it. Just feeling experimental.

[Kaiser]

Bump for gardener. I would also like to know the answer to this.

[gardener]

Intellectually I see nothing offputting in the idea of plátanos cooked lightly in grapeseed oil drizzled with the pear vinegar.

But I'll stick with tradition. Brown fairly copious amounts of butter and just as it starts to fleck, pop the plantains, cut into one inch pieces, into the skillet. If they are ripe, all that's needed is warming them up. If they're not quite ripe, cook for three or four minutes. Drizzle with fresh lime juice.

To increase the lime flavor, you can also add to the butter before you cook it two or three leaves of the Kaffir lime used in Thai cooking.
A light touch of cinnamon or clove doesn't hurt.

[Jean-Paul]

What about a dab of real maple syrup?

[gardener]

What about a dab of real maple syrup?

The idea is entirely repugnant. You have spent too much time in a gym--no home for serious students of the art of fixing plantains for a luau.
(In Arkansas?)

Sugar maples grow in cold temperate climates, bananas in the tropics. QED.

Only someone whose sense of food has been entirely debased by being able to buy watermelons in January when icy rain is forecast could come up with this perverse idea.

But high fructose corn syrup would be great. It's totally a production of modern American enterprise. And who knows? A little genetic fooling around might get watermelons that grow in snowdrifts during sugaring season (or maples that never shed leaves and love year round spring).

And I must apologize. I forgot. "Healthy" recipes are wanted here. I advised browning butter.

Try browning grapeseed oil instead.

And write me back when you succeed. If....

[Jean-Paul]

Okay, bad idea. The only reason I thought of it is that the only other time I had eaten this delicacy was in a really good Vietnamese restaurant in DC, and the plantains had been fried in butter and honey. It was pretty good, needless to say. Well, being that I don't have any honey at the moment I just figured that maple would be a good substitute. Especially since I was considering not using butter, which is undoubtedly one of the big reasons it tasted SO DAMN GOOD!

I'll experiment tonight and let you know how it went tomorrow.

[gardener]

I fear that I have presumed to give advice on the basis of less knowledge than I thought.

By plantains I understood stubby little red bananas. Now I've googled. These things come in many colors and sizes, and their culinary uses in the tropics are enormously complicated.

But what I suggested is one good way. Among, I guess. a great many others.

I still don't think maple syrup sounds right.

[Jean-Paul]

Keep in mind that I will be sauteeing bananas, not plantains.