Adventures in Cooking

My family and I regularly shop at the Whole Foods on Route 1 here in Princeton. One of my favorite things to do is to swoop past the hot bar to see if they have roasted plantains.  I realized last year that I effing love these things!  The best I've had so far was a food stand at a festival last summer from a restaurant in Trenton that I don't know the name of.  I still dream about those plantains!  Whole Foods has pretty good ones though!  I pumped one of their cooks for information on how to make them along with searching the internet and reading the list of ingredients that they post on the bar (which isn't long at all).  I finally got up the courage to give them a go yesterday. 

 

These are my roasted plantains.  My biggest shortcoming is the texture.  The ones from WF are shiny and glistening.  Mine were kinda dry on the outside.  As far as taste was concerned though, they were pretty darn close!  I guess that is all that really matters, right?  Here's how I did it (for future reference!)

*I roasted them at 375 but I might try 400 next time.  They took about 20-25 minutes before they had that nice color.  

*I used really ripe plantains.  Since the peel was almost black all over, it was really easy to take off.  When they are still greenish, I usually have to have a peeler.  

*Drizzle them with olive oil and lightly sprinkle with salt, garlic powder and cayenne pepper and toss them in the oven.

I'm still going to do some tweaking and see if I can improve the texture but I'm pretty happy that I don't have to pay $8.99 a pound for roasted plantains now!