Taquitos de Plátano/Plantain Taquitos, 1971
Original Recipe/Receta Original:
Taquitos de Plátano (de Chiapas)
Se coloca una rebanada de plátano en cada tortilla y se enrollan como taquitos, cubriéndolos con la salsa de mole. Se sirven bien calientes.
Translated Recipe/Receta Traducida:
Plantain Taquitos (from Chiapas)
24 small tortillas
1/2 cup oil to fry the tortillas and plantains
3 plantains, large or long
3 cups of mole sauce
Slice and fry the tortillas.
Use the remaining oil to lightly fry the toritillas, without browning them.
Place a slice of plantain in each tortilla and roll them up like taquitos, drizzling them with mole sauce. Serve hot.
Commentary/Comentario:
The La Cocina de Doña Ventura, by Betty Retana (1971) includes a chapter in the back of the book entitled “Platos Regionales,” where I found this week’s recipe for plantain taquitos. As I wrote last week, this cookbook seems to be directed at young housewives and promises simple and easy-to-follow directions. Well, the directions are short and sweet, but not very specific! Readers were clearly expected to already know which direction plantains should be sliced, how long they should be fried, and what it meant to roll the tortillas into taquitos. This made preparing the recipe into an experiment with a lot of uncontrolled variables.I sliced my plantains cross-wise into 1/4 inch rounds. This worked fine, and they fried up beautifully after about 2-3 minutes on each side. However, for better results, I would recommend slicing them length-wise. With circular slices, one piece is not enough to fill a tortilla, so I used three, but three round plantain slices results in a rather fat taquito. Long rectangular slices would make it easier to create tight taquito rolls. Another point to note is that fried plantains in fried tortillas makes for a very filling dish! As per the directions, I bought 24 tortillas, but in the end, I only fried eight of them, and this made more than enough taquitos for three people, when served with refried beans and Spanish rice. The leftover fried plantains are delicious eaten on their own, or drizzled with spicy green salsa.
What a wonderful blog. I love the idea behind it! These look like what my folks call flautas, which I haven’t had in a long time. Any suggestions on adapting these to make them a little less greasy? Do you think you could put the plantain in raw before you fry?
Gracias!
José
I’m not sure exactly what would happen if you put the plantains into the tortillas raw and then fried them. I think it would work, but the filling might be more of a hot mush instead of the crispy chunks you get by frying beforehand, since the plantains wouldn’t be directly exposed to the oil in that method.
DO NOT try this recipe with regular bananas. I did this for a class assignment because I could not find plantains in any store. I cooked them according to the instructions and the bananas turned all squishy and soggy; kind of like chucks of applesauce. Bananas are soft and sweet;so they do not work as a replacement for plantains. The final taste was very bad, I could only take one bite out of the taquito; although the smell was nice.
Hi Jubenal, Sorry to hear the taquitos didn’t turn out so well. As you discovered, sweet eating bananas are very different from plantains, which are actually a bit more like potatoes in taste and texture (though of course unrelated biologically).