Alloco
Very ripe plantain fried in red palm oil, served with a raw onion and chilli sauce pounded in a mortar.
Photo : ChimaBee · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 15 min
- Total
- 30 min
- Serves
- 4
- Difficulty
- Easy
Method
- Pick plantains with blackened skins that give under your thumb. Peel them and cut on the diagonal into 2 cm pieces.
- Salt the pieces and leave them for 10 minutes, then blot away the moisture that beads on the surface.
- Dice the onion and tomato small. Pound the chilli with the salt, then stir it through the onion, tomato and lemon juice.
- Heat the oil to 175C in a deep pan. Fry the plantain in small batches for 4 minutes a side.
- Lift them out once the edges are brown and the centres soft. Drain on a rack rather than paper.
- Serve straight away with the raw sauce alongside, adding rice to make it a full meal.
Ripeness does the work here. A yellow skin blotched with black means the starch has turned to sugar, which is what caramelises the edges in hot oil. A green plantain stays mealy and dry, fine for foutou but wrong for this.
