BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Mexican Food Plantain, fruit and vegetable

Faintly sweet, decidedly starchy, inedible raw, rich and voluptuous when cooked, a fruit which is eaten as a vegetable and can be ground into a flour to make bread and turnovers � this is �pl�tano macho�, the �male banana� of Mexico. It is native to South East Asia and was transported to the Americas aboard the slave ships - and boiled and mashed plantain is just as typical of Mexican cooking as it is of West African.

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Great article, Isabel, thank you. I must admit I'd come across plantain through Caribbean food, and hadn't appreciated that it was used regularly further afield.

Thank you Asha. It seems to be used widely in Latin America, including the Caribbean, and in Africa, but I haven't come across it much in Asian cuisine, which is surprising since it came from there.

Here in Western Central Mexico as you wrote, the platano macho is not very popular; although they are sold in produce markets, I have never seen them prepared in restaurants or food stands.
Both the regular banana/"platano," and the quite small and sweet when very ripe "platano dominico" (I like to make bread pudding using teleras, coconut, and the dominicos) are very popular here.

However, a few years ago when we took a budget tour of Guatemala all of our meals consisted of rice, beans, quite delicious fried platanos machos, and a tiny amount of some protein.

As a side note, in most parts of Mexico that I have been to I have not run across banana bread even though bananas are quite abundant. The exception to that was near tropical and coastal San Blas, Nayarit a small village named Menanchen since the early 1970's is famous for its excellent banana bread (including those made with coconut and made with chocolate). They also have amazing loaf breads made from corn and made from yuca.

The dominicos are utterly delicious, Les, I love them even more than bananas - and I LOVE the sound of your bread pudding! Utterly scrumptious. Do you make a custard with coconut milk, or a normal cow's milk custard with shredded coconut? The loaf breads also sound interesting - are they leavened?

As untraditional as it may be for bread pudding, instead of cow's milk or coconut milk, I normally use mango juice along with a few eggs and vanilla. Most of the time on top will be a tablet of shaved Mexican chocolate- if I don't use the chocolate, upon serving I might top it with cajeta.
Maria even prefers another version more in which Special K is substituted for the teleras. The dominicos when not really in prime season cost about 3 times as much as bananas but are really worth it!

The loaf breads are unleavened. I will never forget consuming the best corn bread I had ever tasted (which I had purchased in the village of "Matanchen"- in the previous posting I for some reason (?) did not spell correctly!) while watching a Colima pygmy owl walking on the grasses near the beach on Peso Island.

Certainly untraditional for a bread pudding but it sounds scrumptious and nice and light. I love the idea of cajeta spooned over the top, very self-indulgent!

The plantain is classified as a fruit that belongs to the genus Musa. Unlike bananas, plantains are usually eaten cooked, either green or ripe. Green plantains have a starchy taste, while ripe ones taste more like bananas. [url=http://www.truffles.net.au/]Truffles Australia[/url]