Sweet Plantains / Maduros

One of my favorite foods is maduros. I grew hooked on them summer of '00 in Costa Rica (thanks Amigos de las Americas). Plantain facts: Plantains are not bananas. Plantains have to be cooked before they are eaten. Plantains can be made not ripe (green/verdes) in which case they will be fried and eaten sort of like a french fry or boiled in soup or just boiled. They can also be made sweet in which case they are left to nearly rot (they have to be very ripe to turn out good) and then sliced up and fried or sliced into rounds and made with a sweet buttery and brown sugar sauce.

Nearly rotting plantain looks like so

I would even leave this one out a couple of more days. It should be soft when you touch it. If it is not sufficiently ripe, it will not turn out well. When it is ripe enough, it is sufficiently sweet with no sauce, just fried alone.

Peel, slice it, heat some oil, and fry it. Don't turn the burner too high so it will not burn and you can leave it on long enough for the thin edges of the slices to get crispy (that's the most delicious part). I over cooked mine a little due to the burner being on too high.

On another note, James made another pasta sauce this time with onion, tomato, and yellow squash. It was very good and slightly sweet with the onion and squash. He added some small pieces of chicken to it. Here it is.