Ok – can’t rock a hiatus forever. I’ve found a new apartment, I’ve moved, I’m somewhat unpacked, work is busy but (for the moment) not unmanageable. In sum: I can take a deep breath, savor my food, and write up some of my awesome food adventures.

Tonight, we make baked fried plantains. Or fried baked plantains. No, I think the first one.

Obligatory backstory: I am a meat lover, but honestly, the best part of Brazilian churrascaria is the fried plantains. Doesn’t matter what absurd quantities of beef and lamb and chicken and pork I consume right of the sword from which it’s served – I ALWAYS have room for just one more sweet, browned, rich, earthy chunk of plaintain.

So when I saw some perfectly overripe, oversized plantains stacked high in my strange, wondrous/kinda smelly Latin grocery store in my new neighborhood, I knew it was time to try it myself.

Being a little adverse to fried food generally AND disliking the oil spatter burns I inevitably suffer whenever I fry things, I decided to coat the plantains with a little oil then bake them. The same general strategy works when I make my sweet potato fries, so hey, why not?

Several recipes I found online noted that overripe plantains are the best for this dish; these can be identified by their intense yellow color and black spots. I chopped off the ends, peeled the fruit, then sliced at a diagonal into 3/4 inch chunks.

For oil, vegetable would probably have been the right direction, but having just moved, all I happened to have on hand was olive. Using a spritz bottle, I coated everything lightly and evenly and spread the coins on a tray I'd also spritzed. Just for giggles, I used cinnamon and a little brown sugar on half, and set the whole shebang to bake at 450 degrees. 

As sometimes happens when trying a new technique, I didn't know quite the amount of time to bake the dish. I knew the general consistency I wanted (very tender, a slight browning crisp on the edges) -- trial and error, then, was the name of the game. I think I tried them at 10 minutes, 12 minutes, and 15 minutes; they were finally done to my liking at 18 minutes.

Tasting notes: Texture was close, about as close as I was going to get without actually frying. The edges were crispy but the interior never reached the silky, smooth, melt-on-your-tongue tenderness that you get from fried plantains. Flavor-wise, the cinnamon sugar side was delicious; the un-seasoned side was a little bland. Perhaps it was the fruit I purchased, but these babies benefited from a little extra sweetness. I thought the baked plantains were decent, but not as good as fried -- if I use this technique again in the future I intend to use significantly more oil.

On another note, I'm taking these pictures with my new camera. Learning the manual controls will take some time, but definitely better pictures, no?