Plantains (Green and Ripe), Bananas (Green)
We share the Latin American penchant for frying or steaming ripe and near-ripe plantains to use as a side, equivalent in ubiquity to the American dinner roll or biscuit. Beyond that application, we also use both fruits when still completely unripe, woody, and fibrous, due to the starch not having catalyzed into sugar yet. They’re either peeled and puréed fresh with water for addition to porridge, or dehydrated, powdered, and reserved to be used to the same end. Green bananas also get the potato treatment: served boiled to tenderness, either whole in their skins or mashed coarsely with a little butter and salt.
Roots in Variety
These include carrots, white potatoes, the American sweet potato, the red-skinned sweet potato called batata, cassava, and yams (the hulking, bark-skinned West African tuber you couldn’t candy with a candy shop). All of these find their way into soups, stews, and hearty side mashes, with batatas and cassava making the jump from savory to sweet to bulk out dessert puddings. Cassava is also the key ingredient in bammy, a porous, round “cake” that’s either fried to crispy elasticity or steamed to butter-sopping sponginess as an accompaniment for fish dishes.
