Tostones

In terms of fritters, nothing beats the tostones. These twice-fried delicacies are the main complement of many meals in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. Plantains are so ubiquitous there that you can consider them the equivalent of potatoes in the U.S., in which case the tostones are french fries of the Caribbean. Only better.

Much better.

How do you go about doing these marvels of the Caribbean cuisine? The first step is certainly the most difficult: finding suitable plantains. If you happen to live in the tropics, it might just be a matter of going to the nearest grocery store. For us northern dwellers, the story might be different.

For making good tostones, the plantains have to be green. Really green. Just a bit of ripe in it can spoil the magic. The problem is, the farther north they are, the longer they have traveled, and the longer time they've had to ripen, so whenever I see plantains at the grocery store they are starting to turn yellow. Green ones are usually hard to come by, so whenever I see some, I buy as many as I can to make sure I have enough to last me for the whole season. Pretty much every Puerto Rican I know in Michigan does the same thing, which makes them even harder to find.

You'll know you have a good plantain if it's whitish on the inside, sometimes bordering on the pink side of the spectrum. If they look good, it also means that you already peeled them. That's OK, but to make it easier, I cut them into 1 to 1.5 inch thick slices and then peel each slice individually. Regardless of your choice (or non-choice because you peeled them before reading this), you should have a bunch of peeled 1 to 1.5 inch thick slices of green plantains sitting on your cutting board. An average plantain should yield about of these.

Prepare a bowl with salted water and let them soak in it for as long as you want (within reason). I usually let them soak while I'm cooking something else, so about 30 minutes should be fine. Some people put minced garlic in the water, but I don't really notice the difference. Some might even want to put (God forbid) garlic salt.

Now heat oil in a frying pan. Enough to cover the plantain chunks halfway through. Fry them for a few minutes, then turn them over and fry them for a few more minutes. Take them out and put them on a paper towel to soak the excess oil. Be sure to turn off the stove.

Here comes the fun part.

If you are reading this, chances are you don't have a tostonera. A tostonera is a device composed of two flat pieces of wood (or plastic) attached with hinges. The idea is that you put a piece of fried plantain in the lower half and smash it down with the upper half. Clever, isn't it? If you don't own a tostonera, you can use anything from a small plate to your own forehead (there was a TV commercial where they used a laptop to crush them). The idea is to crush the plantain to a thickness of about one quarter of an inch. It can be thicker, it can be thinner, you'll find out which do you like best after trying them a few times. Just be gentle: you don't want paper thin tostones (that would be plantain chips, a different recipe) and you also don't want pieces of plantain flying in every direction in your kitchen.

Now that they are fried and crushed, you have two options:

1. You can fry them now and eat them
2. You can freeze them and fry them at a later time

This might be a good time to add some salt or seasoning to them.

If you decide to freeze some of them, go ahead: they hold well for a few months. When ready to fry them, just take them out and fry them. Be careful when frying frozen tostones because the ice in it will make the hot oil jump. If you want to eat them now, just fry them until they are slightly darker, but still golden. Take them out and pat them dry with a paper towel (again).

You can eat them straight like that or you can use a dipping sauce of your choice. The perfect condiment for tostones (and for all fritters, for that matter) is mayoketchup. So, go ahead and enjoy as many as you want, before someone else eats them.