More Plantains

Yes, more plantains! I once feared them now cannot get enough of them. This time I decided to mix it up a bit. They are delicious sauteed. They are wonderful with rice. But this time, yeah I'm going a little kooky with the plantain. Last year when I was at the Fabulous Food Show, I saw Tyler Florence make mashed sweet potatoes with bananas. I'm sure when Tyler makes it, it's delish, but it sounded a little off to me. I just can't wrap my hairdo around that flavor combination. So, why not try it with plantains!?

I didn't follow Tyler's recipe, I just winged it with stuff I had in the house. I started with two decent sized sweet potatoes, stabbed with a fork a few times and placed them on a cookie sheet.


Then I took my plantains, cut them in half and peeled them. I had three plantains. What else, what else? I looked around the kitchen and in the fridge and found one green apple so I washed, cored and cut it into quarters. Then wrapped the plantains and apple in foil and put it on the cookie sheet with the potatoes.


After about 40-50 minutes in a 350 degree oven, the potatoes were nicely soft and the plantains and apple were roasty toasty soft as well.


I then peeled off the peel of the sweet potatoes and the apple. You can probably leave the apple skin on if you like for some added texture, but I opted to take it off. Then dumped them all in a bowl. I added stuff you would add to regular mashed sweet potatoes... about 2 Tablespoons of butter (I'd add more but I'm trying to watch myself with that kind of thing), a teaspoon of cinnamon, and about a quarter of a cup of brown sugar.


Mash, mash, mash away!!!


It turned out really delicious! I served it with some of our leftover Easter ham. And just to clarify, this was several weeks ago. I don't still have Easter ham! :)

No Fear!!! Plantains

Plantains are an ingredient I've never worked with and not because I didn't want to. I'll admit to some slight intimidation by the unknown, but I think I'm pretty adventurous so when I saw them at BJ's Wholesale Club for 39¢ apiece, I just had to give them a try.

I know a little bit about them from watching Food Network. For instance, I knew that you need a more unripened plantain for frying (tostones). At this time, I'm not really about frying. So, even though tostones look really really good, I had to come up with something else. And in fact, the plantains I bought were probably already too ripe for that anyway.



So I peeled them. Make no mistake, plantains are NOT bananas. The skin is much tougher and more difficult to remove. It's not that big a deal but it was a little bit of a surprise. Your eye sees a banana and expects something. If that makes any sense. Then I sliced them slightly on a bias.


I decided I would do a quick saute in some vegetable oil. I thought olive oil would be too strong a flavor and I think I made the right move. And since plantains are tropical, I tried to keep with that theme and dressed them only with some salt, pepper and lime zest.


They caramelize and change color very quickly. So that is really nice if you are in a hurry for a side dish. They literally took less than 10 minutes from pan to plate. And when they were done, I squeezed the lime juice over the top. It's a very nice acid punch and the flavors married perfectly. I used them in place of potatoes one night and Nick and I both found them really enjoyable and a really nice change of pace. So give it a shot. And don't fear the unknown!