Like the MIddle East, another part of the world that captivates me is Latin America. Their culture is colourful, care free, centred on outlandish celebrations, music, dance, the languages, their accents, the insanely hot people, drool alert. Supermodels both male and female, actors, actresses, musicians, geez there must be something in the water down there. You have Latin blood in you, you are the closest to winning the genetic lottery. On my travel list this year, Asia or Latin America is high on the list. Hopefully I’ll find a travel buddy who will be ready to pack bags with me. I’m thinking Argentina, Brazil or Puerto Rico. All those hot guys with jet black hair and olive skin gleaming in the sunlight on the beach, okay Dunni, stop drooling and go back to food.
This year, I promised to explore more of food from other cultures, and when I saw pictures of Tostones on SYTYCC, I knew I was going to try it. Tostones are in essence our plantain chips, but made slightly differently. How cool is it that we share the love of plantains in common with Latin America. If I would have you know, some parts of Brazil speak Yoruba. Hehehehehe. Tostones are made with green plantains, you all know where I stand on green plantains. The pictures I saw members of SYTCC put up, they used slightly ripe plantains. Somehow, I forgot to make this and the plantains I bought just for this purpose went slightly over ripe. Nevertheless, I am not one to give up, so I decided to attempt it. The process is the same if you use green plantains or regular ripened plantains, the type you would use for frying dodo for example.
Tostones can be served to guests, just layer anything you want on top of it, think of it like chips, or nachos, make it into a canapé or serve with dips. I had plans to eat Adalu for dinner and it was a beautiful match. Think beans and dodo 2.0.
You will need
Plantains
Salt
Cayenne pepper - dry pepper
the number of plantains you use, depends on how many to stones you want to make
How To
1. Peel the plantain. As you can see, this plantain is already getting over ripe. It will work, but for more crispy results use yellow plantains at least, especially if you are not a fan of green plantain
2. Once you have peeled the plantain, cut it into cylindrical shapes like this
3. Sprinkle over salt and dry pepper
4. Then fry for 1 minute on each side, both eh circular part of the cylindrical shape and the sides. Not more than 1 minute. As you can see, I wasn’t concentrating, I ended up with burnt bits. If this happens to you, once all sides have fried, just use a knife to trim off the burnt part.
see, I trimmed the brunt bits off. Because the plantain was already overripe, just a little hit made it too soft. You will not have this problem if the skin of your plantain is yellow
5. After the first fry, smash the cylindrical shapes till it is flat. You can flatten with a plate, frying pan, bottle, anything with enough weight to make it flat. Mine didn’t come out so pretty, because it was too soft but this is the general idea. I will definitely be doing a rematch
once they are flat, carefully lift it off and drop into hot oil. Let it fry till golden brown, or slightly dark brown. The result is a very crispy and sweet to stone. You would have eaten dodo a gazillion times, but the experience of tostones is different.
I served with Adalu (beans and sweetcorn). Recipe for Adalu HERE
A very happy food fusion. Latin America meets 9ja
