Chicken, Plaintain and Peanut Stew (with or without Pretzel Dumplings)

Another summer, another box of mystery ingredients exchanged...it's time for another mystery box reveal!  This year, I received a box of ingredients selected by Matt from Nomageddon that contained a bottle of Sweet Baby Jesus Chocolate Peanut Butter Porter, a package of Boardwalk Craft Beer Pretzel Mix, and a container of Aurora Natural Plantain Chips. These were all amazing ingredients and I couldn't wait to combine them to make one delicious dish.

First of all, next to homemade plantain chips, these are the best I've ever tried. I had to make an effort not to just snack them all away. Loved the beer on its own, as well. I couldn't get the idea of a Caribbean-inspired stew of sorts that featured plantains and peanuts, but the pretzel mix threw me for a loop there, so while that was the inspiration behind my dish, my finished dish wasn't very Caribbean.

Grilled Brie with Tropical Fruit Compote

Funny how you take some things for granted. Take for instance a grill. I grew up in a household that trucked a grill in and out of the garage year round, though especially during the summertime. It wasn't usually anything fancy - burgers, dogs, brats, chicken breasts, the occasional steak. But to this day, the smell of mesquite clinging to the air transports me right back to my 10-year-old self.

It wasn't just us. My grandparent's actually have a grill cemented right in to a concrete slab off of their patio. If we dropped by an aunt or uncle's house for a visit, charcoal levels were immediately checked. Heck, we even packed food fit for the grill into our cooler when we went camping since all of the campsites had  grills built-in.

Neighbors invited you over for cook-outs. The smell of sizzling meat drifted down the street and snaked through your windows, instantly making the decision of what to have for dinner an easy one: something on the grill. Heck, when I moved into my first apartment, my little grill was camped out on my porch.

Roasted Plantains w/ Cajeta & Pecans

Plantains are a bit of a wonder to me.  They look like bananas...they're even called plátano macho (large banana)...but that's about as far as the similarities go.  They're pleasantly meaty and starchy, resembling the taste and texture of a root vegetable. And I enjoy them.

But until now, I've only ever fried them.  Whether cut into rounds and fried once then smashed and fried again to make tostones or cut lengthwise and handled the same way to make the "bread" for jibaritos.  For this method, green plantains are usually used.  Or my favorite way which is to just slice them fairly thin on the bias and fry them once for one of my favorite desserts (put them hot from the oil on top of vanilla ice cream and drizzle with sweetened condensed milk).  But for those we use ripe (black) plantains.

This recipe calls for roasting the plantains.  And doing it when they are about as ripe as they'll get.  The blacker they are, the sweeter they are.  But even that isn't sweet like you'd normally think of sweet - just sweet for a plantain.

The crazy thing I noticed about roasting them, though?  The scent!  It's intoxicatingly musky like a vanilla bean on steroids.  If only I had known this before I started making this for dessert.  I would have taken the time to make my own cajeta, adding the seeds from a couple of vanilla beans while reducing the goat's milk.  Fortunately this will not be my last time making them, so that plan is on for the future!

If you enjoy desserts that aren't too sweet, you'd dig this one.  The sugar in this dessert comes from the amber drizzle of cajeta, but that rich sweetness is dampered by the toasted nuts and those oddly addicting roasted, earthy chunks of plantain.

Roasted Plantains w/ Cajeta & Pecans

by Heather Schmitt-González

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Keywords: roast dessert vegetarian caramel nuts plantains Mexican

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 4 small/medium plantains (black-ripe)
• ~3 oz. (~1 c.) pecan halves or pieces (or use walnuts, almonds, or hazelnuts)
• ~½ c. cajeta (goat's milk caramel)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 450° F.

Cut pointed ends off of each plantain, exposing just a bit of the flesh. Make a shallow slit through the skinn on the inner (curved) side of each plantain. Lay on a baking sheet. Roast until completely soft, ~20 minutes.

In the meantime, toast the nuts in an ungreased skillet over medium-low heat until toasty and fragrant. Set aside. Heat the cajeta in the microwave or gently in a small saucepan over low heat.

When plantains are finished roasting, remove from oven. When they've cooled down just a bit...enough to handle...peel back the skin and slice into ~½" chunks. Pile into a mound on top of the skin on a serving plate. Drizzle with cajeta and sprinkle with toasted nuts.

slightly adapted from Mexican Everyday by Rick Bayless

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