Plantain Party! (For Cool Kids Only!)

After the sad news I got on Wednesday I was thinking of ways to lift my mood when all of a sudden, the idea of a plantain party popped into my head! I thought I'd also lift the mood here a little too so the tribute post isn't the first thing everyone sees when they visit! The party was fabulous, oh my goodness, does anyone else share my infinite love for plantain? I honestly believe it is the best food on the entire planet! Second to none. For those of you who might not know plantain is pretty much a type of banana, but it's usually bigger and less sweet and needs to be cooked. And this is what I spent my Thursday evening doing, cooking plantain in as many different ways as I could think.

I had them lightly salted and fried:

Peel and chop the plantain into little circles, sprinkle some salt and shake them all together, then fry in vegetable oil on medium-high heat turning once till they are a lovely golden brown. 

Some rather unfortunate burnt ones, but they still taste yum!

Seasoned and grilled:

Peel and chop the plantain, get your spice mix (mine was cayenne pepper and Aromat multi purpose seasoning) Place on a foiled covered oven tray and grill at about 200 till they are golden brown. I didn't put oil on the foil because I didn't feel like it but you certainly can. Also, allow them to cool down before trying to take them off the foil!

I have a feeling if these were cut a little thinner  and cooked a little longer they'd make really good plantain chips!

And Sugared!!:

By far the worst but most delicious of all the recipes! I think this recipe is quite common in Latin/South America and they usually use really ripe almost completely black plantain but I didn't have any so I just used regular ripe ones. Peel and chop the plantain, fry in 2 tablespoons of butter, when golden on one side, flip them and add a mixture of 2 tbsps brown sugar and 1 tbsp ground cinnamon, continue cooking till the sugar just caramelizes. This is DIVINE! But just looking at the recipe again is making me feel sick with sugar overload, it was great for satisfying the sugar craving I've been experiencing of late though! Loved it! Oh this is also one of the reasons for that detox I spoke about earlier!

All that brown goodness is cinnamon and caramelised sugar! I burnt myself with this one, was waaaay too eager to try it! I even almost forgot to take a picture so this plate has been about half eaten!

When I was making the sweet plantain, the bf remarked that it smelt like some food he eats back at home called kelewele (pronounced kay-lay-way-lay), so of course I googled the recipe for that to add it on to my list! This particular version didn't turn out too good, it just tasted like plantain seasoned with ginger! It didn't really look any different either so I didn't bother with a picture. So now I'm searching for the perfect kelewele recipe to add to my list of things to do with plantain! You can also boil them, boiled plantain and Efo Riro (spinach stew, not sure how else to describe it!) is the food of kings! And you can roast them to make Boli too, I've tried doing this before but it just didn't have the same taste as the ones you buy from the women on the streets of Lagos!

Several plantains later (between the two of us!) I was full and ready to sleep! Unfortunately it was time for pole dancing!! Lifting my body weight yesterday was something of a chore but I managed it and even felt strong enough to let go of the pole while sitting on it! The instructor was impressed! :) If I had to pick only one food to eat for the rest of my life, best believe it would be plantain! Speaking of, I think I have some plantain chips waiting to be munched on in my kitchen! *happy dance*

Bye for now,

Reni x