Intensely green, verging on chartreuse, plantains hang like chandeliers from tall broad-leafed plants across the Caribbean. The botanical name is Musa paradisiaca, the second word meaning “of paradise.”
The plátano is generous, and can be eaten in all stages of ripeness. In Puerto Rico, the greenest ones can be fried, smashed and blended with garlic, olive oil and chicharrones pork cracklins to make mofongo, one of the island’s best-known dishes. When their peels turn bright yellow, speckled with dark spots, plátanos can be fried and served alongside rice and beans for that signature agridulce flavor, sweet and salty. And when they finally become black and squishy, seemingly past their prime, their flesh can be boiled, then blended with butter, and then pressed into a pan to make pastelón, a casserole layered with sofrito-laced beef.
Share Three Years After Hurricane Maria, San Juan Is Stronger Than Ever After each hardship that has hit Puerto Rico in the past few years, the local community has rebuilt a culture more vibrant than ever before. By Ingrid Rojas Contreras February 06, 2021
The woman sitting next to me leaned over to look out the airplane window at the ocean below.
Nosotros los puertorriqueños, she said. We come from the water. Introducing herself as Diana, she told me she was returning to Puerto Rico for the first time since Hurricane Maria, the Category 5 storm that devastated the island in 2017. Some of her relatives had yet to rebuild their roofs, and Diana had come to lend a hand. The rest of the time? She d be at the beach listening to Bad Bunny, Puerto Rico s rising star of reggaeton, and eating