Cooking with Dr. Monkey

My main new year's resolution is to make a new recipe or eat a new to me food every week in 2013.  In keeping with my resolution, I bought some plantains recently and I was going to make mofongos with them.  But turns out they were too ripe for that recipe so I decided to try something else.

 Plantains are super ripe when they are black and oozing a little. 

I peeled my three plantains and I discarded the peels.  They were kind of tough to peel compared with the bananas I've been peeling all my life.  I was going to slice them and fry them up, many people in Latin American countries fix them in this manner.  But since they went all mushy on me, I mashed them up and added two cloves of finely diced garlic.

 My mash.  Looks yummy doesn't it?  You know it does.

I poured about a third a cup of vegetable oil in my big frying pan and once it was hot I ladled in my plantain mixture.  I was going for a potato pancake kind of shape and I succeeded.  I fried them until they were brown on both sides, this let the natural sugars in the fruit caramelize a bit and it cooked the garlic enough. 

 When they were done I put them on a paper towel to drain some of the excess oil and then I served them with some seared tuna topped with a fresh made pico de gallo and a side of turmeric rice.

 Supper's ready!

The verdict: the plantain cakes were pretty good.  Different, but good.  Will I make this dish again?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  However I will use plantains in some recipe again because I want to get good at cooking with American ingredients.