dessert in the desert

July 1990. My studies brought me to the east coast of the US. Over the preceding summer, I was drawn to the Western US. By the beauty, the strangeness, the desolation.

Working the PCH from north to south, I met a strange man. He called himself Hiram. A Mormon by choice, he beckoned me to a northern Arizona settlement Colorado City. As it was on my way back East, I agreed to join him and we shared driving shifts en route to the desert town.

Quickly, I became overcome with a sense of both dread and ennui. My life to that point was a low hum of emotional noise, with erotic spikes of inspired recipes. This, now, was a nadir of life. The environment was an above-ground abyss of nothing. Dry, featureless, lifeless. I felt the absence of nothingness. Even nothingness was something compared to this arid, useless expanse of space.

We arrived in Colorado City, the uneasy breeze of cults emanating from north, west, east, south. I was suffocating from the arid heat, the noxious fumes of religious fundamentalism.

Hiram beckoned me with his missionary style (not to be confused with my preferred style of lovemaking). Behind closed doors, I learned of odd rituals: covered shoulders, holes in sheets, and worse.

Forcing myself out of dry complacency, I concocted a lush, lively dessert of the desert. Taking a “tip” from a favorite restaurant in New Orleans, Hiram was laid on a table, covered in a sheet, with a perfectly placed hole for his tropical fruit. A show of flames and delectable sauces.

My heart was full again.

Wine Pairing: an Australian Sauvignon Blanc

Music Pairing: Harry Belafonte “Day-O”

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serves 10 (for the large lds families)

ingredients

• 3 ounces butter

• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar

• 3/4 tsp cinnamon

• 2 1/2 ounces banana liqueur

• 2/1/2 ounces aged rum

• 5 bananas (chef’s choice - classic fruit or man meat)

instructions

• Combine butter, sugar, and cinnamon in a flambe pan.

• As the butter melts under medium heat, add the banana liquor and stir to combine.

• As the sauce starts to cook, peel and add the bananas to the pan. For man meat, no need to peel.

• Cook the bananas until they begin to soften (about 1-2 minutes). For flesh, 15 minutes.

• Tilt back the pan to slightly heat the far edge. Once hot carefully add the rum, and tilt the pan toward the flame, to ignite the rum.

• Stir the sauce to ensure that all of the alcohol cooks out.

• Serve cooked bananas over ice cream and top with the sauce in the pan.