Plantains

Tonight I cooked dinner for my mom. I was going to prepare this last night and then come up with something to her personal tastes for dinner tonight. It will have to wait until next time since we went out for dinner last night and I had all this stuff all ready to go.

This meal was very heavy and fairly bland. Bland in the way that appeals to me, like corn, bran flakes and plain bread. It seems strange to me that so much of the South American and Caribbean recipes I can find are for very heavy and starchy comfort foods that people here would enjoy. Perhaps it's just because I'm searching for the recipes from here and therefore yielding results most typical to a North American palette.

Pushing this dinner back a day definitely had an advantage: the Brazilian Pork Roast got to marinade for another 24 hours. I imagine this made a huge difference; the meat was completely infused with flavor and very tender. I kind of wish I'd made something else to go along with it in the tortillas, but it was still a delicious little wrap up of goodness. The flavor is a very mild citrus and ginger flavor with a bit of heat and smoke from the chili type spices. This was definitely my favorite of the bunch, but unfortunately mom was allergic to something in it, probably the ginger, and could not continue eating her meal.

The Corn and Cheese Arepas were very similar to the Broiled Polenta last week, except fried with crispy cheese! From my corn meal cooking experiments thus far, this was probably the best. Bites not including cheese were comparative to the other attempts, though.

We went to 4 different stores before we could find a smoked ham hock to make Split Peas with Ham. I thought that was kind of strange, but they had many at the butcher shop. We probably should have just gone there first! This is a very inexpensive dish that could feed many by itself. It's essentially split pea soup with ham, but with more heat and less paste that I remember split pea soup revolting me with. I thought that it was a bit salty, since I used bouillon instead of chicken broth, but other than that it was not only edible, but enjoyable. Go figure, maybe it's just the color of the peas.

I'd also like to mention that after many attempts of cooking with dried bay leaves and not even noticing a flavor imparted on the food I cooked them in, I decided to buy fresh bay leaves and try them out. Every time I watch a cooking show that uses bay leaves they always warn not to use more than one because they have such a strong flavor that will overwhelm the dish. I used two just to see what all the fuss was about and I'm still not sure I even know what a bay leaf tastes like. Maybe my taste buds are immune to the flavor of bay leaf or something, but I've got until these spoil to try and figure it out now. I also find it strange that buying bay leaves fresh come in such a large container if you can only use 1 in entire pot of food. You're bound to waste 95% of the bay leaves you purchased!

Anyhow, for the rest of the dishes I decided to prepare plantains 2 different ways, 1 sweet and 1 savory. I'd never really had them before, except during a brief trip to Mexico, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. The process of making Fried Plantains seemed like a very long one, and only for 1 plantain. The results were pretty bland, almost like a thick potato chip. I can't imagine I'll be preparing them this way again, but I'm sure a lot of people that are fans of Potato Chips will be all over this.

Grandma supervised my custard creation and pondered over the idea of making custard from scratch. Why do it the hard way if you don't have to? Because this Coffee Custard is delicious. I baked a plantain and used it as a garnish with walnuts and gave it a nice drizzle of honey. Considering how ridiculously strong the coffee I used in it, it was fairly subtle and the vanilla came out quite a bit. The plantain was much better baked and used as a sweet, but since bananas are so much less expensive I'd likely use one over plantain for dessert purposes, too.