101 Foods: #47 Fried Plantains

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There is no botanical distinction between a plantain and the (cavendish) banana. Due to their high starch content, plantains are not usually eaten raw, but used for cooking. When I cut through the peel, I was surprised to see that

the fruit was tinted with a reddish hue. Plantains are are commonly eaten meal in the equatorial regions of Africa and South America. They are prevalent in Cuban cooking and southern cities that these peoples have been transplanted to such as Miami. When I tasted the plantains, they were sweeter than I had expected them to be. But that could be because that I, like I would a banana, let them ripen and let the peels brown before I used them.

I decided to cook these in a savory manor and I found a recipe that fries them with crushed garlic. I liked the idea of having a slightly sweet, slightly salty snack. One thing that I didn't thing about was how porous this fruit is. They soaked up the flavor of the garlic and not in a good way. I think that if I would have carmalized the garlic first, it would have been fine, but this recipe didn't work for me.

As hard as I try not to be wasteful, I scraped off the bits of garlic off the plantains and set them out on a plate for everybody to try. I really like how they crisped up as I cooked them and really wanted to like them. But alas, there was a rare throw-away food in the Williams household that night. All this being said, I don't blame the plantains. I feel that this was more of a problem with the recipe, not the main ingredient. I am more than willing to try them again.

What do you think of plantains? Any suggestions for recipes to try them again?