In late June, the renowned Spanish chefs Sergio and Javier Torres opened Cocina Hermanos Torres, a tailor-made restaurant that, in a short time, has become a stage for their gastronomic experiments. The latest? A reinvention of Canary bananas.
"We want to show that this fruit can be perceived as a healthy ingredient," they say. It is precisely this idea that has led the two Michelin star chefs to collaborate with the Association of Banana Producer Organizations of the Canary Islands (ASPROCAN) in order to explore the different uses of a fruit that, in their opinion, "has always been relegated to being a dessert."
The Torres brothers argue that bananas are a perfect "healthy replacement for other foods." Hence, in their new culinary creations, they have gone for dishes such as the "Canary salad", a potato salad that contains bananas instead of potatoes. They have also tried to replace wheat and even eggs with banana flour, and to create banana-based sauces and mayonnaises.
They claim to have discovered not only the nutritional benefits of bananas, "but also that you can cook with them." Moreover, Sergio and Javier Torres have resorted to science as a guide in their quest to add originality to their dishes.
To this end, they have been backed by researcher Antonio López Farré, winner of the National Research Award of the Royal National Academy of Medicine, and director of the book "Plátano de Canarias y Salud" ("Canary Islands' bananas and Health"), a compilation of the latest scientific discoveries on the nutritional benefits that make Canary bananas stand out from other bananas. According to López, one of them is the high content of "potassium and tryptophan." The latter is an amino acid that secretes serotonin, which is linked to increased energy and happiness.
López stresses that in addition to positively affecting the mood of a person, the latest studies reveal that Canary bananas are also beneficial to prevent "some types of cancer and cardiovascular diseases."
With this knowledge in hand, the Torres brothers have decided to go one step further and promote the benefits and applications of Canary bananas in a manual that will be presented in late October. It will contain between 35 and 40 recipes, most of them savoury, and compile the most optimal uses for this fruit. It will be targeted to the general public, but above all, to cooking professionals.
A total of about 400 million kilos of Canary bananas are consumed in Spain each year, and it is "a superfood that offers a wide range of possibilities," say the Torres brothers.
Source: elmundo.es
