Caribbean · Main
Mofongo
- Intermediate
- 45 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, richness that coats and comforts, ending saline and clean.
Ingredients
- 4 green plantains
- 150g chicharrón (crisp pork skin) or crispy bacon
- 6 garlic cloves, mashed with olive oil and salt
- Oil for frying
- Chicken broth or garlic-butter shrimp to serve over
Equipment
Thermometer · Mortar & pestle · Deep-fry pot
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · shellfish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Peel plantains; slice thick; fry at 170°C until tender and gold, not crisp.
- In a pilón (mortar), smash hot plantains with the garlic paste.
- Fold in chicharrón as you pound: crunch through the mash.
- Pack into a bowl, unmold, moat with hot broth or crown with shrimp.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Deep frying 96 recipes
- The oil was at temperature before anything went in, measured rather than guessed, and the vessel is no more than two-thirds full.
- Everything went in dry. Surfaces are patted down and any coating is not dripping, because water hitting hot oil erupts and is the one accident this technique actually has.
- The oil recovers between batches. It is back at temperature before the next load goes in rather than falling further with each one.
- A steady vigorous bubbling that slows as it finishes: the bubbles are the food’s own water leaving, so a piece that has gone quiet has stopped drying out and is done.
- Seasoned or finished in the first seconds out of the oil, while the surface is still hot and will hold what lands on it. Anything applied to a cooled crust sits on top and falls off.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once and the oil temperature collapsed. The crust forms slowly while the food sits in warm fat absorbing it rather than shedding steam, and it comes out heavy and greasy instead of crisp, which no amount of draining afterwards will fix.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Barrel-aged Chardonnay (Meursault style)
- Also Right
- Champagne
- From the Taps
- Pilsner or witbier
- Zero-Proof
- White grape & tonic
Butter-dressed shellfish climbs a weight class: oak-and-cream Chardonnay matches it richness for richness.
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