Coconut and Chocolate Sorbet with Banana and Rum

I have a book called "The Flavor Bible" by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. It is probably, out of my 90+ cookbooks and technique books, the most important book I own. It, and "The Cook's Book" by Jill Norman form the two-book foundation for coming up with our own stuff in our kitchen and have been responsible for unlocking a lot of creativity. If you don't have either of these books, buy them both RIGHT NOW.

The Flavor Bible is a reference book. A bunch of world-class chefs got together and took all of the ingredients known to man and put them in this book. For instance, the entry on lavender takes up about a whole page of OTHER ingredients which pair well with lavender. Here's a sample:

LAVENDER
Taste: sweet, sour
Weight: Light
Volume: loud
Tips: Caraway seeds can substitute for lavender

almonds
apples
baked goods (cakes, cookies, scones, shortbread)
blueberries
cheese, ricotta
CHICKEN
CREAM AND ICE CREAM
creme fraiche...

and so on....for every ingredient know to man. Where bold letters signify a classic pairing (as agreed upon by this group of world-class chefs) and CAPITAL BOLD LETTERS mean, mister, you are a moron if you don't try this pairing. I mean, the header entry for leeks is like this:

LEEKS
Season: Autumn-Spring
Taste: Sweet
Botanical relatives: chives, garlic, onions, shallots
Weight: Light-medium
Volume: Quiet
Techniques: Boil, braise, fry, grill, roast, steam
Tips: Add early in cooking process

Hopefully, you could see the utility of such a book and that it can lead you in different creative directions, down to integration of textures in a dish and so on.

Why am I telling you all of this? I made a really good sorbet today, and I used this book to do it. We had some bananas that were overripe. Looking up the entry for bananas, it screamed at me to use CHOCOLATE, COCONUT, ICE CREAM and RUM (using the book's formula).

So I did. And there was much rejoicing. This is so good and rich and delicious. The key to great sorbet is the boiling time of the sugar syrup. Four minutes achieves the perfect density of sugar in the water. Such that scooping it out (even after days in the freezer) still maintains lovely, scoopable consistency.

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
½ cup desiccated (dry unsweetened shredded) coconut
1 ½ cups sugar
⅛ teaspoon salt
2 ½ cups water
½ cup rum
3 overripe bananas

Finely chop the chocolate and coconut in the workbowl of a food processor.

Combine the sugar, salt, water and rum together in a heavy saucepan and heat over high until the sugar is dissolved and the syrup comes to a boil. Then, let the liquid boil for exactly 4 minutes.

With the processor motor running, gradually add the boiling syrup to the chocolate and process until smooth. Refrigerate the mixture in a bowl until cold.

Place the peeled, chopped bananas in the processor with the chocolate mixture, and process until blended and smooth. Scrape the mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer's instructions. Transfer sorbet to a container and freeze for at least 4 hours. Keeps for up to 2 weeks.