thoughts on plantains

I was at BJs with my mother and she sent me to get some fruit. I think I had a little too much fun with that. Have I mentioned that I love fruit? I basically picked up every type of fruit I saw. Well....I came across plantains. They look just like bananas so I assumed they were a fruit. Seeing as I love fruit, I grabbed a plantain as well. About three days later I went to eat my plantain. I was going to eat it just like a banana. As I was peeling it open mom asked me if I could eat a plantain like that. I didn't know. I just thought it was going to be like a banana. Before I took a bite, she looked it up on her iphone. I feel like most times when we don't know something we look it up online. What did people do before the internet? Life must have been so much more experiential. Come to find out, thanks to the internet, green plantains (the type I was about to take a bite of) are used solely for cooking. You can only eat black (ripe) plantains raw. Wow, that sounds so contradictory. Anyways, I decided to put the plantain in a ziploc until I was ready to cook something with it.

I decided to fry the plantains and have plantain chips. Then I saw instructions on how you could make mini plantain bowls and put salsa in them. So I went with that. I sliced up the plantain into about 1 inch thick slices. On the stove I got a frying pan and put a good bit of oil in it. The amount of oil I had to use kind of grossed me out. The plantain slices had to be completely covered in the oil during the frying process. Thanks to my mom who has a nifty thermometer I knew exactly when the oil was 375 degrees and could begin frying. I fried the slices for about 5-10 minutes, took them out, and let them cool for a couple minutes. I smashed one of the slices to make a chip and with the other pieces I made a little hole in the middle of it. Once all of the slices had holes in the center, I put them back in the pan and fried for about 5 more minutes. I took them out again and waited for them to cool. I grabbed the pineapple salsa we had in the fridge and spooned a bit into each of the holes. My plantain creations were complete.

 I was hesitant to try one because of the frying process. I just couldn't see how it could taste good after being immersed in oil twice! It actually tasted pretty good. It tasted kind of like a french fry. It was definitely yummier with the salsa. Kaela, Catherine, and Mom tried them and like them as well. I probably won't be  making these again anytime soon just because I don't think it was worth all the oil. But I am glad I didn't waste the plantain after finding out I couldn't eat it raw (like a banana).

Creation #2 = success!