Beautiful baked bananas

Recently our friends Mike and Sue visited the Campo from Puerto de Mazarrón and they gave Sharon a wonderful old book of Scots recipes.

This is Lady Maclean´s Cookbook, not surprisingly, by Lady Maclean, wife of Sir Fitzroy Maclean. He notes in the introduction: “When I married, I weighed ten stone. Now I weigh fifteen. Need I say more?”

The book has no publication details but probably appeared in the 1950s or 1960s and it is crammed with recipes for delicious real food without any of the nonsense of modern fashion. You won´t find purple lettuces and mascarpone in these recipes.

The Macleans lived at Strachur House, Argyll, and many of the recipes are from there, or from her ladyship´s friends who obviously moved in elevated social circles. But great tribute is made to the cooks of their households. Lady Maclean says her grandmother was a member of the Tennant family and “like most of her generation could not boil an egg herself.” But she was crazy about food: “How that garrulous family ever stopped talking long enough to eat, I often wonder.”

Here is a recipe for Baked Bananas Creole which will serve four or five people and which came from Hamsell Manor, near Tunbridge Wells. Sharon is a banana fiend. “I remember we used to grow them in our back garden in Africa and I have always loved bananas. I went to college in Tunbridge Wells and lived there for a year. So this is the perfect dish for me.”

“Baked Bananas Creole

Lay half a dozen peeled, ripe bananas in a shallow fireproof dish and sprinkle over them:

Three tablespoons of brown sugar
The juice of one lemon
Three tablespoons of water

Bake in a slow oven until the bananas are brown, adding, half-way through the cooking one sherry glassful of rum. Served with whipped cream handed separately.”

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