We got sweet.
Maybe you thought those three words -- Bananas Foster pizza -- would never get along but let me tell you that this weekend they did and somehow we didn't burn down the house.
My boyfriend and I and our friend Duc went to a Portland International Film Festival screening on Sunday of the Higgins sponsored documentary The Chicken, the Fish and the King Crab. If you get a chance to see this movie all about the 20-plus-year-old international French cooking contest the Bocuse d'Or I think you should. It was so popular that there's an encore screening -- February 22nd at 2pm at the Whitsell. Get your ticket!
The gist: "happy" Norwegian halibut, Bresse chicken, Arctic King Crab, 24 internationally renowned chefs, and a year of too-many-chefs-in-the-kitchen training for a couple days of intense competition.
So we saw the movie as an appetizer and then came home to cook. On the menu: pizza. FIVE to be exact. I won't bore you with the lamb and olive sausage, spicy Italian pork sausage, roasted red peppers, spicy sopressata, fresh basil, mozzarella goodness. But I do want to let you know that Bananas Foster pizza -- which we devised while walking to the movie -- is a grand idea.
I rolled out the dough, baked it for a few minutes, and then pulled it out. Once it cooled I finely grated dark chocolate over the top (Chuao's Firecracker chocolate to be exact that our superfine friend from San Diego gave us) and threw it in the oven for a minute longer while sauteing the bananas in a little butter and sugar over medium. Once they were nice and caramelized -- not so long, 2 minutes and a bit -- I added the Pyrat rum, cooked it off for 30 seconds and then lit the whole slurry on fire. We poured that onto the hot chocolately pizza and then topped it with scoops of Tillamook vanilla.
Next time I think that we'll light the bananas once they're actually on the pizza and then throw the flaming pizza like a frisbee onto the table. If you work for the fire department I apologize.