Give us this day our daily plantain

Have I ever mentioned that plantains are to Puerto Ricans what shrimp are to Bubba. Plantain is the fruit of the mountains. You can fry it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. There's, uh, plantain canoes, plantain creole, plantain chips. Pan fried, deep fried, twice-fried. There's sweet plantain, green plantain, mashed plantain, smashed plantain, plantain soup, plantain stew, plantain with syrup, plantain and veggies, plantain ice cream, plantain sandwich. That's about it.

In this particular article, I'm going to talk about mofongo. Mofongo is nothing more than plantain that has been fried, then mashed, and compacted into a ball. You can see as much in the picture.

To make mofongo, you just do exactly that: you fry it until it's golden, then mash it with a mortar and pestle, form it into a ball, and eat it. Of course, there's more to it than just that, so I'll add that before frying the plantain, it's better if you peel it first. You really don't want to eat the peelings. Then soak it in salted water for about half an hour, while you do other things. This removes the "mancha de platano" (plantain stain), which no-one knows what it really is.

Pat it dry, then fry it in plenty of oil. When it's done, mash some garlic in the mortar, add some salt, maybe spices, and then add the plantains and start mashing. People usually moisten it with chicken stock, or add pork fat to it. I do no such thing, of course.

This time, I cooked some onions with cilantro, added some salted water to it, and reduced it while cooking. Then used that water to moisten the plantain and give it a slight onion-y flavor.

Oh, did I mention that the plantain has to be green? The greener, the better.