Today we're traveling west a couple countries over from Guyana to Colombia!
Colombia's dish is called aborrajados, which are fried, stuffed plantains. Fried plantains on their own are delicious and exciting and are enjoyed by many people in many different countries. But I have to hand it to Colombians for realizing you can add melty cheese to them. Well, I guess it's not that hard to realize that melty cheese makes most things better.
The recipe starts with a couple very ripe plantains.
Which are then cut into 8 pieces each.
Those pieces are then fried for a few minutes in oil until they're golden brown.
Once they're done frying, they're drained on some paper towels to get most of the hot oil off. Then they're placed on some parchment paper.
Then they're flattened to about 1/4 inch thick. I just used a wad of paper towels and mashed them with my hand. I'm sure there are better ways to do it to get them more even but the recipe I used wasn't very specific.
Once they're all flattened, pieces of cheese are placed on top of half of them. Most of the recipes online use mozzarella, but I'd imagine any cheese that melts well would work. I didn't get any pictures of the assembly of these because it was easier to mold the plantains while they were still slightly warm. After the cheese is placed on one, another flattened plantain goes on top and the edges are pressed together. Sometimes guava paste (known as bocadillo) is also put in the middle with the cheese, which I wish I had read before making these because it sounds amazing.
A simple batter is made of flour, sugar, salt, egg, and milk. After a quick dip in the batter, the little plantain sammies are placed back in the pot of oil and fried on each side until golden brown. Mine are a little past golden, but that didn't affect the taste.
Mmmmm, cheese. I was worried if I put too much in the middle of each of these it would come pouring out when I fried them, but I don't think they were in the oil long enough to really melt them so much that they turned into lava. If I make them again I'd definitely use more cheese. It's also important to eat these a couple minutes after they're made, because the cheese starts to set once it's no longer hot, which means you could bit into it and all the cheese comes out in a single piece. Kind of like eating cold mozzarella sticks. Still tasty, but you don't get that satisfying streeeetch.
To make more of a meal out of these, I served them with some turmeric rice and black beans. I also made a dipping sauce from some serrano hot sauce and also added some fire-roasted tomato salsa to the plate. They didn't really need a dipping sauce, but I thought it would be fun.
If I make these again, I'd also try doing them in the oven without the batter. I'm not sure they really needed to be coated before frying again, but the name "aborrajado" literally means "battered." Apparently it's common to grill or bake these, though. This recipe also made 8 of these, but I would absolutely buy a couple more plantains and make more of these and just re-heat them. I love fried plantains to begin with, but the sweetness of the plantain coupled with the mozzarella was really delicious and even though I'm stuffed from dinner right now I could absolutely go to town on another plate of these any day of the week.
Recipes Used: Aborrajados
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