One evening Tommy and I went to the new Caribbean place in town. It is a pretty neat place both inside and out. It is a renovated gas station that the owners have turned into a restaurant, with a gas-station decor (the name of the restaurant is Fuel). It looks like an old Gulf station. Out back there is some really nice seating, both covered and uncovered out on the grass. It has a bar area and a bocce ball court (more like a lane). Tommy chose to order Patacones as his side. The server described them as green plantains that were smashed and fried to a crisp. We loved them so much that we wanted to re-create the recipe at home so that we could eat them whenever we wanted. A few looks around the internet later, I had a fairly easy recipe that basically said to cut, fry, smash, fry, season, eat. At Fuel, they were served with a light orange mayonnaise-type sauce. After browsing the grocery store, I decided that the sauce was most likely Thousand Island dressing, so that is what we dipped our Patacones in.
Patacones
Ingredients
1 plantain, as green as you can find
oil for frying (I used vegetable oil this time)
Salt
Dipping sauce (I used Thousand Island dressing, but the internet says that people use ketchup, mayonnaise, and pretty much anything else you can think of to dip into)
Preparation
1. Heat oil in pan over medium to medium-high heat (oil should be 1/4 inch in depth)
2. Peel the plantain — Peeling a green plantain like a banana won’t work. Chop off a little of each end, then score the flesh down the length of the plantain 4 times, so that you have 4 sections of flesh. Then take your thumb and wedge it between the flesh and the meat and run your thumb down the length of the plantain to get the skin off.
3. Cut it into 1/2 to 1-inch pieces
4. Fry the pieces for about 2 minutes on each side, just until they start to get some color
5. Put a piece of wax paper on a cutting board. Put one piece at a time on one half of the wax paper,then fold over the other half to cover the piece of fried plantain. Use a heavy skillet to smash the plantain (it should now be no more than 1/4 inch thick. I like them on the thicker side, but some may like them super-thin).
6. Put the flattened plantains back in the frying pan and fry on each side until golden.
7. Sprinkle salt on the plantains after taking them out of the frying pan..
8. Let cool, then dip in your favorite sauce and eat!
