Banana Glace

Banana glace is a Senegalese dessert of frozen banana cream spread over fresh banana and finished with chopped nuts and candied fruit. It is a chilled, rich, decorated dish, and it belongs to a side of Senegalese eating that gets less attention than the country's rice dishes. That side is worth naming. Senegal has a substantial tradition of desserts and sweet drinks, from thiakry and ngalakh to bissap and bouye, and a good deal of it sits alongside a French influence in presentation and technique that the country absorbed and adapted. Banana glace shows that clearly: the assembly is composed and plated in a way that reads as European, while the base is a fruit that grows abundantly across the region. It is served with a small cup of strong black coffee or espresso, which is the detail that places it most precisely. Coffee served that way after a dessert is a habit of the Senegalese urban table rather than of the village, and banana glace belongs to restaurants, hotels and household occasions rather than to everyday cooking. The toppings, peanuts, slivered almonds, glacé cherries, angelica and raisins, are the kind of decoration that signals a dish is being made for guests.