Canoas de Amarillo (Sweet Plantain Canoes)

As promised, a guest post from Puerto Rico! Come back every Monday for the next month for more Puerto Rican recipes.

Hello from sunny Puerto Rico!  I am so honored that Bethany asked me to be a guest on her blog.  I am so excited to share some Puerto Rican flavor with you. First a general note on Puerto Rican cusine before we get started….I am asked this question countless times by tourists who come to the jewelry shop I work at and I’m sure you are asking yourself this question right now… “Is Puerto Rican food spicy?”  And my answer is…Puerto Rican food is NOT spicy, so for everyone who have sensitive tummies and taste buds, take comfort, you will love Puerto Rican food! Puerto Rican cuisine is a mix of the cultures on the island, that being: Spanish, African, and Taíno (the indigenous people of Puerto Rico)., making it unique and delicious.

The first recipe I made is called Canoa de Amarillos, or in English “Sweet Plantain Canoe”. I first made a dish similar to this one when I was still living in Chicago, called Pastelón.  My best description of it is Puerto Rican lasagna, the meat filling is a wonderfully spiced meat with green olives and raisins and instead of pasta, they use the ripe plantains cut in strips and fried.  The combination of this dish is amazing; it is sweet, savory and cheesy all in one, and basically a flavor explosion in your mouth.  Since the pastelón is quite time consuming, a co worker suggested that I try this canoa, which has the same ingredients as the pastelón, but is much simpler and quicker to make. Basically the plantain is the canoe that holds the meat with some melted white cheese on top, a great combination of flavors without all the hard work and frying mess, since in this recipe you bake the plantain in the oven.

This recipe uses one of the most enjoyed and common ingredients in Puerto Rican cooking…Plantains!  Even though plantains may look like bananas, they are nothing alike, you can’t just peel and eat a plantain, you have to cook it first. Plantains are used in many dishes here, and they can be prepared many different ways.  If you buy them when they are green and under-ripe, you can fry them and make tostones, a salty and savory thick plantain chip.  If you buy them when they are yellow and black and ripe you can fry them they are soft and sweet.  This recipe uses the sweet plantains, so when you are ready to make the dish they should look yellow with some black spots on them.  Too black is too ripe for this dish and too yellow is too under ripe.  If you have trouble finding plantains that are the right ripeness, buy some that are yellow and put them in a paper bag, which will help them ripen faster, and in a couple of days they will be ready to use.

I looked at a few recipes to make this canoa and I ended up using the recipe for the meat from The Noshery. I had used this same meat recipe in the pastelón I made.  It calls for ground beef, but since I am not so much of a ground beef fan, I opted to use ground turkey, and you couldn’t tell the difference.  So use whichever ground meat you prefer. I also made the meat the day before, this is the kind of meat that taste better the next day once it’s been sitting in all its spices and juices overnight.

The meat recipe calls for adobo and sazón, both of which are staple spices in Puerto Rican cooking, and you can find them just about anywhere.  As for the adobo, it calls for 2 tsp of it, but when my Puerto Rican boyfriend tried my meat, he said, “esta soso”, to which I said in my mind “that better mean delicious in Puerto Rican slang”. However, to my dismay it means it doesn’t have enough flavor, and so since he is the true Puerto Rican of us both and has been eating this type of food his whole life, he added some more adobo, and it tasted a lot better.  These Puerto Ricans sure do know about their spices, so take my boyfriends advice, if you taste the meat after it is done and it needs a little more flavor, throw some more adobo in there.

Overall the canoa turned out great. I love the combination of the flavors, the sweetness from the plantain combined with the savory flavor of the meat and the cheesy topping.  This is for sure a new flavor combination unlike anything found in American cooking. So try out this first Puerto Rican recipe, I can’t guarantee that when you eat it you’ll be able to feel the hot Puerto Rican sun and the ocean breeze flow through your kitchen, but I can promise that it will be delicious!

Canoa de Amarillos (sweet plantain canoe)

• 1 lbs ground beef or turkey
• 1 onion, minced
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 green pepper minced
• ½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 tsp adobo (or more if you decide it needs it)
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 2 Tbs vinegar
• 1 envelope of Sazón
• 2 bay leaves
• 12 green stuffed olives, halved (optional, you can either leave this out, or add as many as you want)
• ½ cup raisins
• ¼ cup tomato sauce
• 4 ripe plantains
• 2 cups shredded white cheese

To make the meat:

Combine beef/turkey, onion, pepper, garlic, cilantro, adobo, oregano, vinegar and sazón in a large bowl and mix well.

Heat a large skillet to medium heat with about 2 Tbs of olive oil and add the meat mixture to the pan. Cook until the meat is brown and some of the juices are bubbling up, then add the bay leaves, olives, raisins and tomato sauce.  Mix together and let it simmer for 10 minutes, then set it aside

To make the canoa:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Peel the plantains by using a knife to make a slice down the side of the peel and open it from the middle.  If you try to peel it like a banana it will break.  Wrap the plantains individually in tinfoil and place on a baking sheet and bake them in the oven for 30 minutes.

Once the 30 minutes have passed, unroll them from the tinfoil and stick a fork in them, they should feel soft with a little resistance in the middle.  Make a slice down the middle of each plantain, making sure not to cut them completely in half.

Spoon the meat mixture into the opening and top with as much cheese as you would like (for me the more cheese the better).  Put the canoes back into the oven for about 10 minutes so that the cheese can melt and the plantains finish cooking.

Take them out of the oven and let them sit for a few minutes before serving. Buen Provecho! (which means Bon Appetit in Spanish)