Yes! We've Got No Bananas Today.

I'm part Puerto Rican and I love plantains. You kinda have to. They take your Boricua card away if you don't like platanos... I ran this column before but Internet gremlins took it down and I think it has enough good information it merits a second show.

One of the main reasons plantains are a staple in Latin American and West African cooking is that the fruit is extremely versatile. Unlike bananas, plantains must always be cooked before ingesting. Functioning as vegetable and fruit, a plantain can be served as an appetizer, in soup, as a main dish and even as dessert. Some people make fermented drinks from plantains as well. Starch has never been so delicious!

In the Caribbean there are these magnificent delicacies: tostones (twice-fried green plantains), mofongo (mashed green plantains “stuffed” with crackling), and little mashed balls with garlic salt that make for a very earthy soup.

Puerto Ricans also use the yellow plantains and stuff them with cheddar cheese for piononos, and its big sister dish is a meat pie called pastelon. These are a little labor intensive, but worth the effort once you grow accustomed to working with plantains in your kitchen.

There are three stages of ripeness for a plantain:

1. Green ones are relatively bland, much like root vegetables, but they pick up flavors and intensify them.
2. Yellow plantains are medium ripe and slightly sweet.
3. Fully ripe, are yellow with specs of black to fully black, and it turns softer to the touch as it ferments in its own juices, and smells sweet. Do not mistake this look for the fruit going bad, instead it is gold! At this point, it reaches a sweetness that is almost as unadulterated as fresh honey.

To peel a green or yellow plantain, slice off the tips and make a slit along the skin from end to end. Start peeling under running cold water; otherwise, its juices will run through and stain your countertop and hands.

The plantain stain is rather stubborn and Puerto Rican folklore claims it marks the soul of expatriates. Luis Lloréns Torres even wrote about it on a poem to the very stain, claiming that neither soap nor iron could take it off; and ends with the simple proclamation that as a Puerto Rican we'll carry the stain in saecula saeculorum. 

If the skin breaks, that’s okay, as you will discard it. To prevent oxidation place in a bowl of cold salted water before cooking -- plantains blacken like potatoes. If you employ this method, dry with paper towels before frying to prevent splatter. Ripe plantains can be peeled with relative ease, like a banana, because their skin is more pliable.

Plantain Bread

(Modified from a recipe from my late friend Carlos Sanchez)

Ingredients

1 cup mashed ripe plantain

½ stick of unsalted butter, softened

1 1/4 cups flour

2 eggs

1 ½ cups sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

4 tablespoons sour cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon baking power

½ teaspoon salt

Procedure

Beat butter until smooth; add sugar, eggs and sour cream.

Blend plantains, flour, baking soda, salt and baking powder. Add to the egg mixture. Add the vanilla and beat thoroughly.

You may add crushed almonds or raisins or even a few chocolate chips in the mixture.

Pour into a greased and floured pan. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for about an hour. Check with a wooden toothpick. When it comes out dry, the bread is done.

Plantain Chips (Platanutres)

1 or 2 large green plantains

salt

garlic powder

oil for frying

Procedure

Slice plantains paper thin using a food processor as you would for potato chips. Fry handfuls at a time until golden (depending on how hot the oil is, this should take a few minutes), do not crowd the pan or they’ll start sticking together. Place on paper towels to drain excess oil and sprinkle with a dash of salt and garlic powder. These are crispy and delicious on their own, with a tangy salsa, or dipped in a garlic sauce.

Oven Roasted Sweet Plantain

Cut the tips off a sweet plantain. Place in a baking dish and roast for 20 minutes at 400-degrees.

Take out and slit the skin lengthwise, peel back the skin and discard. Cut along the center and split in half lengthwise, apply a dab of butter to melt and a dash or nutmeg or cinnamon. (You can add a bit of a tangy shredded cheese over it for a sweet and savory combination.)

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These are simple recipes that can give the uninitiated a good starting point to begin working with plantains. If you are lucky enough to have a fully stocked supermarket that carries Goya frozen foods, you may try these out to assess their taste and texture. If you are luckier to have a Latin American restaurant near you and can afford a little treat, I highly suggest it. I'd start with tostones with garlic mojo sauce (or even the fried ripe plantains, which are richly sweet and kids will love it).

The Twitter feed #KaliFoodGoddess includes a fantastic recipe from the blog Delish D'lites for Plantain Cups with Shrimp and Avocado Salad: it is designed for a more experienced cook but a sensational recipe we look forward to making soon!

Arepas

Arepas are wonderful cornmeal cakes from heaven!

The Taíno people called corn maíz, from which the word maize was derived. A seafaring race of Arawak speaking, handsome folks, the Taíno's chiefdoms extended from the northern to southern Caribbean.

Corn in itself has been a staple crop of the Americas since pre-Colombian times. Herewith ends the history lesson.

An arepa is a simple flatbread made with water, salt and flour – but in the case of the arepa, what is used instead of flour is either cornmeal or masa harina. This is the bare minimal arepa.

Masa harina is white and finely ground to a consistency similar to flour (and is more commonly used to make tortillas). Cornmeal is yellow and mealy, golden granules (and is used for arepas and something Puerto Ricans call surullitos de maiz, corn fritters).

To make arepas, you'd use a pre-cooked corn flour which Colombias refer to as areparina and Venezuelans call masarepa. 

The traditional way to make arepas was to soak the corn, then pound it in a mortar to remove the seed germ and the lining. What was left, the masa, was then cooked and ground and used to make arepas.

The arepa is shaped as a flat disk, though sizes and shapes vary. It is a staple in both Colombian and Venezuelan fare, but it is also very popular and found in other Latin American cuisines throughout the Caribbeans and Central Americans.

Arepa preparation also varies from sweet to savory. Some are used simple to sop up soup and stews, meat juices or gravy. Arepas are also used as sandwich “bread.” The Venezuelans in particular love to stuff theirs with all sorts of goodies: from cheese to meats to fruits and legumes.

Generally spherical, crunchy on the outside. Some are more pancake-like. Arepas are versatile and easy to make. You should consider making it a staple in your diet!

Preparation depends on the type of arepa you want to make, but you can mix and refrigerate until ready to go. Cooking times, because you are working with precooked masa, generally doesn't take longer than it does to brown the masa – usually less than 10 minutes.

I love an arepa filled with mozzarella, but there are a couple of arepas with pork (meat and rind) that intrigue me and I will like to try soon. The beauty of the arepa is that it is very versatile and allows you to experiment in the kitchen.

Epicurious has eight great recipes to get you started!

Soul Food

Do I really need another blog?

Nobody needs a blog. I do like writing and reading about food. I like food. I love to cook. This blog will give me the opportunity to continue doing this and centralize the Food Goddess projects.

Expanding the ongoing conversation with family, friends, and my Bacon Posse is awesome; learning and trying new ingredients, new methods, gadgets, and spanning cultural and national boundaries dish by dish a great incentive.

The true labor of love is finding great, relatively easy recipes that can be tweaked in a variety of ways to prepare and consume great food.

This space is not necessarily about selling books, though the cookbooks (ebook and paperback) are certainly for sale and I hope to release more volumes. The Amapola Press blog will carry all the publishing news, but if new volumes are in the works, or available for sale, I will mention it here as well.

When I start working again, I hope to add restaurant reviews. In Brooklyn, Bay Ridge has a plethora of fantastic restaurants; Park Slope and the Heights have great bistros and cafes. Living in New York City does have its advantages in terms of great culinary adventures.

The Twitter feed will continue to run every weekend, providing relatively easy recipes for weekend chefs, some spectacular food porn, brown bagging ideas, and seasonal ideas for tailgating and/or picnics. These are aggregated recipes from the Internet which sounds like things I wish to try in my own kitchen, but also things for which family, friends, and readers have expressed an interest or desire.

When I do try these and then tweak them at least once, I will include the results here. This space also lends itself to book reviews and critiques of other published works.

On Pinterest I have aggregated some of the archives from the original Food Goddess food columns. Technical issues with that site have stalled some articles, but when they are resolved I may post there as well as here. For the moment, there are dozens or articles in the archives that served as the foundation for the original cookbook.

Also on Pinterest, there's a Bacon board. Everybody should have a Bacon Board! And apparently there is a request for a tome on the definitive book on bacon, which I have accepted as a challenge – because that's the kind of person I am...

On Facebook, my page Food Porn Aficionado remains open to all (not so my personal page which is reserved for family and personal friends only). I have considered and even designed a page for Amapola Press but I feel it is redundant with a Google+ page already in existence and the Amapola Press website. I'm simply not sure what more I could add that was unique to the page – without going insane trying to manage all that online presence.

So, why do I need another blog? Because it feels natural to centralize all the culinary stuff together and a blog allows me a different venue with which to post longer pieces that do not lend themselves to Twitter with its 140-word limit or Pinterest with its focus on visual images.

Like all my writing projects, this is a work-in-progress and I rely on you to let me know if there are topics, foods, products, cuisines that you'd like me to explore – because collaboration is always more fun!

I think this will probably start heavily skewed to Caribbean and Latin American foods, because that was the plan for the third volume of the Food Goddess series. This remains mostly a labor of love. The plan is to give you something interesting to read once a week and ideas to take to your own kitchen.

You may leave suggestions here, at the Amapola Press Google+ page or the Facebook's Food Porn Aficionado with ideas, requests, complains or opinions about past, current and upcoming posts. 

I'm thinking of starting with arepas – does that sound good to y'all?

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