Fried Plantains

By the way, I love fried plantains. I particularly love plantains decadently fried in palm oil. I love the smell that the oil leaves on the plantains.

My plantains must also be cut for frying in a particular way. Sometimes I have visitors to my kitchen wonder why my knives are all blunt. It is because my mind wanders so much when I cook, and I have an innate clumsiness, and worse, I have a primitive habit of cutting up many things including my plantains against my palms instead of against chopping boards.

The traditional way of cutting plantains diagonally is fine but it ruins things texturally for me. My fried plantains need to have both soft and crunchy parts to them, which means they have to be fat in some parts and thin in others; cut in long tapering chip-like strips. They must also be served hot.

One of my fondest fried plantain memories was made at Labadi beach hotel in Ghana. Instead of being served boring groundnuts as a prelude to ordering our meal, we were served fried plantains cut in short thick chips, and spiced. We asked for more until the waiters started to turn their noses up.

They might have mistaken us for those who come to restaurants to get full on water and free small-chops. They might have been right about us! Never mind, I tried my version of spiced Ghanaian fried plantains last week. They are a popular snack called Kelewele in Ghana. My Nigerian version was just as delicious.

My ground spices for the plantain were fresh ginger, half a dried yellow Cameroonian pepper, four whole cloves and a small piece of cinnamon bark. I added two tablespoons of fresh pineapple juice and a pinch of salt. My plantain pieces were tossed in the ground spices and pineapple juice and left to marinate for twenty minutes. After which they were fried in hot vegetable oil until quite dark brown. I found that the spices gave an extra crunch to the plantains, which I liked very much.

Kelewele has something of Dodo’kire, a specialty of Ikire town in Osun State, about it. It is the same principle of spiced fried plantains, the differences being, the plantain used for the Dodo’kire is ripe to the point of blackness, and the main spice in Dodo Ikire is hot peppers. Dodo’kire is also mashed and moulded into round balls.

I have always wanted to like Dodo’kire but find the added peppers overwhelming, and the over-ripe plantains prone to drinking up all the cooking oil and being nauseatingly greasy. I have to admit that after all that experimenting with spices; I find it hard to eat fried plantains just like that. Even just the simple addition of cinnamon to fried plantains gives it a mouth-watering aroma and enhances the sweetness of the plantain. And I have a sweet tooth.

On a house visit with an aunt - Karen King Aribisala, I was introduced to another spectacular recipe for frying plantains. I also began to wonder about the names that people give fried plantain dishes, - dodo, Ipekere, Kelewele,

Pionono - Not only are they all bordering on amusing terms of endearment, they are all so onomatopoetic.

Pionono, Karen King’s fried plantain dish is originally Puerto Rican. Ripe plantains are peeled and cut thick lengthwise, perhaps one small plantain into two or four lengths. They are initially fried until they are golden to make them pliable, and I suppose to shorten the second frying time that comes at the end. The length of plantain is curled up and held in a circle with a toothpick. The hole in the middle is filled with cooked meat, chicken, shrimp, corned beef, beans, vegetables, or whatever the eater desires. The plantain and filling are basted with beaten egg on both sides and fried over medium heat in just enough oil to cover the bottom of the frying pan. Frying is about 2 to three minutes on each side until the egg basting looks cooked.

And what is the perfect accompaniment for my plainly fried plantains? It would have to be Egusi soup made with resilient Ugwu leaf (not wilting Shoko or Tete, the Yoruba spinach leaves that I grew up eating). The ground melon seeds (Egusi) blended up with crayfish, salt and pepper simmered thickly on the face of the soup until it forms small islands, without the unnecessary intrusion of meat...

The balance of sweet, savoury, peppery plus the hot sweet moistness of the plantains is one of my absolute favourite comfort meals. It can never ever be overrated in my books.