A fantastic banana pudding for a barbecue

The sun is out and in the fields the wheat is being harvested, making the sunsets hazy and amber.  It is August weather at its best and makes me long for a barbecue before the evenings start to draw in and grow cold.

I bought my first rickety red-painted barbecue for £15 when I was around 12 years old, and sure enough it rusted through after only a couple of winters.  Ever since we have improvised with an ancient cast-iron wheelbarrow filled with charcoal, wire over the top.  It works really well, but can stay hot for several days afterwards. While the others cook sausages and burgers, my favourite things for a barbecue are halloumi with chili oil, slices of marinated aubergine cooked until they blacken and large Portabello mushrooms spread with garlic butter and cooked in foil.  All good with plenty of green salad leaves and olive bread.

Barbecues are also great for sweet things.  We usually bake bananas, sometimes in their skins, otherwise times peeled and wrapped in tinfoil with chocolate chips or golden syrup.  Pineapple dipped in icing sugar also caramelises well.  Anyway, while going through A Chef for All Seasons I found a recipe by Gordon Ramsay that may offer a rather upmarket alternative, which I have adapted slightly to work over hot charcoal.

Roasted caramel bananas for the barbecue

4 tablespoons light Muscovado sugar
50g unsalted butter
100ml double cream
2 whole cloves
8 medium bananas (ripe but not too soft)
a little sifted icing sugar to dust
4 stalks of fresh lemon grass (slashed in half almost to the base)
crème fraiche to serve

Earlier in the day (and long before you light the barbecue) make the sauce. Melt the sugar in a pan with a little water. When dissolved and clear raise the heat and cook for 3-5 mins until a light caramel has formed. Remove from heat and stir in the butter. Mix in cream and cloves. Set aside to infuse and cool. Once ready, remove the cloves.

(Incidentally, I suspect a good quality toffee sauce may also work well, as a lazy alternative - you could always warm it and add the cloves for a little extra flavour.  My absolute favourite is Cartmel.   They also do a lovely sticky toffee pudding which O and I once ate with toffee sauce and clotted cream along with a dark, viscous pudding wine that tasted of sultanas.)

Anyway, where was I?  When you are ready for pudding, cut the bananas in half lengthwise and dust with icing sugar. Place on the barbecue and allow the sugar to caramelise on each side.  As soon as the bananas are caramelised, place these (4 halves per serving) in the middle of a sheet of tin foil. Place the lemon grass sticks on top of the bananas and then spoon the caramel mixture over the bananas.  Wrap up the foil.  Make sure that there are no gaps where the sauce could leak out, but leave a bit of a gap about the banana.  Place back on the barbecue (but not onto the very hottest part).

Cook until the parcels are puffed up (Gordon Ramsay suggests 7-10 mins, and I expect it would be the same for the barbecue).  When ready, serve each immediately, with some crème fraiche dolloped in the top of the parcel.