Hot Buttered Rum and Banana Compote with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

Bananas come from a perennial herb plant, not a fruit tree. The stem of the plant, which can grow up to forty feet in a single year, is made up of thousands of overlapping, tightly stacked leaves. Clusters, or “hands,” of bananas wrap around the stem. One banana plant can weigh up to a thousand pounds. This excessive weight causes the stem to bend and the bananas to point upward toward the sky, looking like they are growing upside down. A large red flower adorns the very top of the plant li