10.9.2020- Laurie with a Fried Plantain Recipe!
10.9.2020- Laurie, French Tutor, with a Fried Plantain Recipe! Heading link
How to cook Fried Plantain
Comment préparer des bananes pesées
In this blog I will explain how I make a very simple but amazing side dish known as Fried plantain (Haitian style). It is a very popular side dish in the Caribbean. In Haiti for example, we call this bananes pesées (a l’Haitienne) and in Haitien Creole it’s bannann peze and you can find it at every restaurant and people even sell them on the streets. There are two types of plantain that you can use for this recipe. You can either use the green plantain which would be salty or the yellow plantain which would be sweet (refer to the image above to see the difference). The taste and the texture of both of the plantain is different once fried as you can see on the pictures above.
Ingredients and tools needed (for 1 person):
– 1 plantain (green plantain)
– Oil (enough to dip fry the plantains)
– Salted water (~ a cup, Haitians like to add other spices on the water)
– A plantain press (if you don’t have one you can use the back of a bowl or a plate as long as it’s flat)
– A medium or large size pan
– A plate
Instructions:
1- First, you need to peel the plantain. After that you will cut it diagonally into 4-5 pieces (it all depends on the size of the plantain).
2- Pour the oil into the pan
3- When the oil is hot, carefully place the pieces of plantain in the pan and let them fry until they are ready. To check if they are ready to be removed from the hot oil, pierce one of the pieces with a fork and if it goes in easily it is ready.)
4- Once they are done, lower the volume of the oven, remove the plantains from the pan and place them on the plate.
5- Press each piece with the plantain press (or the back of the plate) until they become flat but not too flat or it will break. Dip them all in the salted water for a few minutes.
6- Finally, turn the heat back up on high then gently add the flat pieces of plantain into the hot oil. Once both sides of the plantain turn golden brown, they are ready to be removed from the pan. Place a paper towel on the plate then put the plantains on it.
7- They are ready to be served! You can sprinkle salt and pepper on top if you’d like.
*If you are using the yellow plantain there are some modifications that you have to make in the recipe:
A – cut the plantain into 7-8 smaller pieces (step 1)
B – don’t press the plantains and don’t dip them in the salted water (step 5) .*
– Laurie