Cuban · Starter
Tostones Rellenos
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, wood-smoke running underneath, settling low and earthy.
Ingredients
- 4 green plantains, hard and dark skinned
- 1 litre neutral oil for frying
- 1 litre water with 20g salt and 4 mashed garlic cloves, for soaking
- 300g raw shrimp, peeled and roughly chopped
- 60ml olive oil
- 100g white onion, finely diced
- 80g green cubanelle pepper, finely diced
- 12g garlic, mashed
- 200g ripe tomato, grated
- 3g ground cumin
- 3g dried oregano
- 60ml vino seco
- 2g hot pimentón
- 6g salt
- 1 lime, in wedges
Equipment
Deep-fry pot · Grater / zester
The skills inside
ScoringDeep fryingSweating aromatics: soft, never brownedDraining fried food: a rack, never paperFrying the paste until the oil splits
Allergen screen
Found: shellfish · alcohol
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
- Score the plantain skin along its ridges and lever it off in strips, cut the flesh into 4cm barrels and drop them into the garlic salt water while the frying oil comes up to heat.
- Drain and dry the barrels, then fry at 150C (300F) until pale straw, floating, and yielding all the way to the centre when you push in a skewer, 5 to 6 minutes; lift out onto paper. 6 min
- While they are still hot, press each barrel into a tostonera cup or over the base of a small glass to open it into a walled cup; if one cracks apart, the first fry was short.
- For the filling, sweat the onion, pepper and garlic in the olive oil, add tomato, cumin, oregano and pimentón and cook until the oil separates, then stir in the shrimp and vino seco and pull the pan off the heat the moment they curl and go opaque.
- Raise the frying oil to 190C (375F) and fry the cups until deep gold and audibly rattling, about 2 minutes; drain, salt at once, fill hot and serve with lime. 2 min
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.
Scoring 28 recipes
- Lift one cut open with a fingertip: it parts through the skin and stops in the fat beneath, showing a pale wall at its base. Any cut showing red or fibrous flesh has gone too deep; any that has not reached the fat has left the skin tethered, and it will tighten under heat.
- The lines run parallel at even spacing, roughly a finger's width apart, each carried the full length of the face and stopped the same margin short of the edge. Sight down them: lines that converge, wander or crowd at one end cook at different rates and read as careless on the plate.
- Each line is one clean draw of the blade held at a slant, not a sawn or doubled track, and it leaves a bevelled lip standing slightly proud rather than a vertical slot. The surface should be dry and cold, near 4C (39F), when it is cut; worked warm and slack it drags, and the blade tears where it should part.
- After cooking the cuts have opened and set, each a clear gap with firm browned walls. Lines closed back to faint scratches were cut too shallow or too straight down, and the surface has shrunk over them instead of through them.
- The piece lies flat and true when it is set down, with no cupping through the middle and no lifted, curled edge. A bowed piece means the tightening surface was never released, so it pulled the whole thing up and left the underside pale where it stood off the heat.
Where it goes wrong The blade was pushed rather than drawn, through a surface left warm and slack, so it went past the fat and into the flesh. The cuts bleed as they cook and the juices flood the surface, so it steams instead of crisping: the lines gape into wet ragged trenches, the flesh between them dries into hard ridges, and the skin stays leathery and pale where it should have blistered and set.
Draining fried food: a rack, never paper 77 recipes
- The rack was in place before the first thing went into the oil, not fetched afterwards while food waited in a spider over the pot.
- It lands on a rack with air moving underneath it. Anything set down on paper or a flat plate traps its own steam against its base.
- Salted within seconds of landing, while it is still hot enough to take seasoning.
- A minute later the underside is still as crisp as the top: no soft flat patch where it has been sitting.
- Nothing is stacked or piled while hot, however tempting it is to keep it together. A pile steams itself soft from the inside out.
Where it goes wrong It was drained on paper, or piled up to keep warm. Steam leaving the food has nowhere to go but back into the crust, so the underside softens within a minute: the crispness the frying just bought is gone before the plate reaches the table.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño
- Also Right
- Champagne
- From the Taps
- Pilsner or witbier
- Zero-Proof
- White grape & tonic
Shellfish sweetness meets acid, salinity, and bubbles, precision instruments for delicate meat.
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