On Plantains

 Over the weekend fried some sweet ripe plantains that I brought in from Haymarket. The seller was 'nice' to me, his wares were rotting away and it seemed nobody else wanted them so he gave me 12 for a dollar. Brought it in, fried up a bunch in several batches and added some salt to it. So popular it was that people were having trouble keeping their hands off of it. Really, by the time the guests came in it was almost done, so I had to personally take it to the guests so they got a bit or two at least. It was sketchy af I know but that's the only way people can get to eat them plantains.

First time I tried making plantains, the sweet fried ones. And not bananas. I've tried frying bananas for desserts, they've gone nowhere as well. Now that I've done it I feel so bad for never having done it. I've written about how much I like fried plantains with rice and  black beans. If I knew it was this simple never would I spend dozens of dollars on the simple dish! All I need to do is make smoked black beans, for which I just looked up a recipe and it appears the smokiness comes just from the paprika which is simple to make. Really simple.

Don't want to stress on this too much but I do really love me some plantains in all forms including whatever they will make from it, including the plantain-flour materials. I'm so close to being able to make kelewele on my own that it makes me horny just to think about it. I'll be a master of all my cooking.

Speaking of cooking and mastery of it, thinking about fermenting flours and making porridges and 'dhido' out of them. It appears that making kenkey or banku is not too too difficult, you want to ferment the flours in open air, boil them until the right texture with a lot of water and that's it, add your salts and spices, take your kelewele on the side, make a stew probably 'bhaaji' from the 'pav bhaji' it's blended veggies that can me eaten with anything and I've got a solid West African comfort food that doesn't involve rice. I"m excited.