Thursday, December 4, 2008

Platanos en Tentacion (Plantains Temptation Style?)

I got this recipe thanks to Sonia R. Martinez who is a nice Cuban lady also a cook book author and writer and has a few blogs one of them is "Sonia's Hawaii" usually focuses on her life in Hawaii, food, and gardening. She is also the wonderful moderator of a Cuban group I love called "Cocina Cubana in the Exile" and does a great job at it.

She has given me permission to post her recipe on my blog, of course I slightly altered it, I changed the ratio's a little bit because the original recipe was for "3 plantains" and I used "4 plantains" also her mother uses "sherry" wine for this, the recipe calls for dry white wine, but I used "Edmundo Vino Seco Dorado" (it's what I usually use and what I have on hand along with red wine)

Platanos en Tentacion is a rich sweet plantain dish, it is ripe plantains simmered in a rich cinnamon infused butter, wine, and sugar syrup. This is a Cuban recipe, but to be honest it was never made in my house (we always fried the plantains and used it for other stuff) that's why I put no recipe of my own. Other countries have their own "version" of Platanos en Tentacion but the version I am presenting is the Cuban version.

Ingredients:
-4 dead ripe black plantains

-1/3 and 1 1/2 tablespoons white cane sugar
-1/3 and 1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar
-1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
-2 cinnamon sticks broken into pieces
-4 tablespoons butter
-4 tablespoons dry white wine

Directions:
(1)Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit. Butter a baking dish.

(2)Peel plantains, cut them in half, place on greased baking dish, insert broken cinnamon sticks into plantains, mix two types of sugars and cinnamon powder, sprinkle half of the sugar over plantains, drizzle all plantains with some wine, add more sugar, and dot it with butter cut into little pieces.

(3)Place in oven and bake for about 1 hour until golden brown and bubbly,

NOTE:
-Sonia say's this is not meant to be dessert you can eat it with your food, I agree with her.
-If you wish you can have it as dessert or snack, it would be delcious with some vanilla ice cream.
-The plantains have to be dead ripe black because that is when they are at their sweetest and softer, do NOT worry it won't be mooshy or anything they are still firm just very sweet.
-I wasn't so patient my plantains could've been riper like Sonia say's "black with a whitish cast" something a long those lines.

Oh and here is a question for anyone who may be reading this, How do you make your Platanos en Tentacion? Or a similar dish? I'm open to new ideas :)"

LASTLY... click on the final last picture and you can see in detail how wonderful it looks, the size of the picture there doesn't give the dish justice :)