Pollo y Platanos Fritos

These days I have been thinking a lot about Nicaragua and missing, well, everything.  The people, the vegetation, the food, the language, the food, the food and especially the food. Especially the plantain chips.  There exists a little green snack bag of salted plantain chips in Nicaragua that I simply cannot resist. Every little market I walk by, I check for them when I am down there.  The biggest problem with this little love affair with all things crispy and salty and plantain-y is that I have yet to find that wonderful little green bag in the District.  And, so, with Nicaragua on my mind, Libby, Amalie, Beth & I had dinner.


Menu:
Fried Plantain Chips (#166)
Jerk-Style Grilled Chicken (#167)
Simple Salad with Yellow Tomatoes

Handheld mandolin impresses every time.

My thoughts about making the chips were simple: buy plantains, peel plantains, slice plantains, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt & bake.  In the end, this turned out to be a perfect plan, however, step two yielded the only major speed bump.  As it turns out, plantains do not peel like bananas.  The skin is much tougher to pull from the fruit flesh, and so I quickly resorted to some help, found by Amalie (o Amalia, cuando estamos en Nica).  

Oiled, salted & ready to go.

I cooked the plantains at 375 degrees for about 12 minutes, and then watched them closely.  They ended up taking around 18 minutes or so.  Verdict: close enough to the little green bag to keep me happy.  Not close enough to mean I am still not wanting to get back to Nicaragua as soon as possible.

Hi, my name is Kim.  Will you be my friend?

Wouldn't you want to just buy this and figure out what you could do with it once you saw the endearing bottle on the bottom shelf at Whole Foods, looking something out of The Help by Kathryn Stockett?  Well, I sure did.  


Things I knew about molasses pre-menu:
1.  It is very thick.
2.  It is in brown sugar.
3.  It is in cookies sometimes found at Starbucks that next to a nonfat latte make you think you have died and gone to coffee-house heaven.


Things I learned about molasses post-menu:
1.  It makes chicken taste like it has died and gone to heaven.  


Short list, perfect lesson learned.  

I let the chicken marinade longer, as in about four hours, prior to cooking it on the stove. Paired with a Red Stripe, compliments of Amalia, and a bright napkin, it was close to perfect.  

Some palm trees would have brought us right to that line of perfection.

133 to go...