After the Thanksgiving holiday I wanted to eat a bit lighter. The holiday weekend consisted of arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas), black beans and white rice, baked sweet potato, scallops with a berry reduction, butter croissants, turkey leftovers, and endless more. Trust me I am all for rich and fatty foods but enough was enough already! I need recharge in order to be ready for Christmas.
While I got to enjoy all the delicious food this Thanksgiving, I didn’t get to cook, that honor was given to my father, but now I have lots of new ideas for recipes. I’m going to take a stab at that berry reduction one of these days.
This past weekend I picked up some plantains from the store. The great thing about plantains is that they are incredibly delicious and cheap! You can make them a number of different ways, slice em, mash em, fry em, dice em, all of which I will be writing about in the future. Usually I fry them with peppers and spices to have with breakfast, my own version of home fries.
Unlike other fruits and veggies you can have plantains whether they are extremely ripe or still green. A ripened plantain it is called ‘maduro’ which translated means ripe. A green plantain is called simply ‘platano.’
The plantains I picked up were still green so I decided to dice, fry, and put them in a salad, a great dichotomy of healthy greens and fried goodness!
Plantain Salad
There is nothing particularly difficult about making this dish. You can incorporate any number of things into the salad. It really is a fall back for me when I’m short on time and ingredients.
Ingredients
1 large plantain
2 tablespoons olive oil
Romaine lettuce
Cherry tomatoes
Serrano ham
Diced sweet red pepper
Balsamic vinaigrette
I decided to use some Serrano ham for the salad and fry it lightly to get the salty taste. Because the ham is so salty, I wouldn’t add any extra salt. In order to fry the plantains, heat up 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan. Let it heat, taking extra care that the oil doesn’t burn. When the oil is hot toss in the diced pieces of plantain. Fry them until they are nice and crispy on the outside, turning them every so often so they don’t burn.
