Recipes with plantain

The plantain is not a fruit you peel and bite into: it is a starch, closer to a potato than to a dessert. Raw, it is hard and bitter; it always needs cooking. And its ripeness changes everything, because the starch turns to sugar as the skin darkens. Green, it is neutral and floury; black, it is sweet and yielding. Two different ingredients under one name.

The recipes below split along exactly that line. On the green side you fry, flatten and fry again: Puerto Rican tostones, Colombian patacones and Cuban tachinos — three names for the same two-stage move, salted and served like bread. Ivorian foutou banane goes further and pounds it to a smooth dough. On the ripe side you are after sugar and caramelisation: alloco, Cuban plátanos maduros, Ghanaian kelewele spiked with ginger and chilli, Guatemalan rellenitos, where sweet mash encloses black beans.

Two points of handling. Green skin does not come off like a dessert banana’s: score it lengthways with the tip of a knife, then lever it away in panels, with oiled fingers to keep the sticky sap off. And ripe plantains burn quickly because they are sugary — drop the heat compared with green ones, or they blacken before the middle is cooked. They also turn up as a side in vegetarian casado and attiéké with vegetables.