How My Love of Bananas Forever Changed My Life

Chicago 1973

A cool early summer breeze was blowing through the kitchen, making the curtains dance and flutter. I remember my mom, wearing a gaudy 70s house dress sitting at our kitchen table peeling green plantains into a lime green Tupperware container full of water. She was singing along to the Spinner’s I’ll Be Around that was playing on our AM radio, using a very beat-up

paring knife that my dad bought second-hand on Maxwell St to slice the outer peel of the plantain, then soaking it in the water. I sat on the floor, losing interest in my coloring book by the minute, intrigued by what my mom was doing. I wasn’t sure what exactly she was doing but I definitely wanted to do it too.

I went and stood right next to my mom while she peeled the plantains, not saying a word, just watching, transfixed by these green bananas. She smiled at me, but told me to go outside and play, it seemed like she was always trying to get rid of me, I probably hung out in the kitchen a little too much in her mind, I should be outside playing like other kids, but watching my mother cook was an endless source of entertainment for me, I was fascinated. My mother was a good cook, of course, I sort of knew this at the time, but I came to really appreciate her cooking later in life, she had a natural ability when it came to cooking. Good cooks have great instincts borne from years of practical experience, this was my mom to a tee, she had been cooking from scratch her whole life. She grew up on a farm, she learned how to cook everything from scratch, it wasn’t really an option.

“In fact, the whole kitchen smelled so good, like garlic, cumin, and annatto seed, even though at the time I knew none of those names, I just knew it smelled good, and that a lot of times when I came home and walked in the kitchen my mouth started watering”

Instead of going outside, I sat down at the kitchen table next to her, watching, waiting to see what she would do next. She asked me if I wanted to learn how to make Tostones. That word seemed familiar but strange at the same time, I knew my father was Puerto Rican and we ate things other people in my neighborhood didn’t. I also remember having them before and that I thought they were delicious. My mother sliced the peeled plantains diagonally and placed them in a big pile on a dinner plate. She already had arroz con gandules simmering on the stove, and she had another cast iron pot there as well, she took the plantains over and dropped them in the cast iron, I instantly heard a sizzling sound. I couldn’t really see what was happening and pulled on my mom’s dress demanding to see the action. She pulled a chair over and I climbed on.

“What’s that?” “What’s it cooking in?”I asked.

“Lard” she answered. “It makes everything taste good” I didn’t know what lard was, or why it was important but I figured she must know.

She handed me the tongs and told me to start turning over the plantains, making sure to cook them evenly on both sides. I asked her a question I have been asked a million times myself.

“How do you know when they are done?

She laughed “I just know,” she said. This annoyed me but I was too distracted by the sizzling action of the plantains. In fact, the whole kitchen smelled so good, like garlic, cumin, and annatto seed, even though at the time I knew none of those names, I just knew it smelled good, and that a lot of times when I came home and walked in the kitchen my mouth started watering. After a few minutes she told me to remove all the plantains, I handed her the plate and jumped down, hoping to grab a bite before dinner.

“Now we have to smash them” she said

“Huh? Smash ‘em?”

“Yep”

She took one plantain, placed it on the small wooden cutting board, and hit it gently with an end of a rolling pin. She flattened it, picked it up to show me, not too thin, not too thick. She handed me the rolling pin and told me to do the rest. The first one I whacked hard and split it into four pieces, which made me giggle but she didn’t seem amused. Her sideways frown let me know I did it wrong. She showed me again, showing me a sort of tapping motion, which I tried to do even though I wanted to smash everything with that rolling pin, it was fun. She took one I had already flattened and threw it back in the lard after turning up the heat a bit. After cooking it for a few minutes she took it out and placed it on a plate lined with a paper towel, and tossed Lawry’s garlic salt all over it. Then she told me to try it.

That first bite was intense hot crispiness, that garlic salt added just the right note to the not-too-sweet plantain. It was like a French fry, but better, a bit sweeter, earthier, denser. Instantly I smiled and wanted more, but she said I had to cook the rest, and I’d better hurry because my dad would be home soon. I climbed back on the chair and cooked the rest of the plantains while she supervised, sometimes wandering around the kitchen to get the rest of dinner ready, cleaning and setting the table, and cutting lettuce for a salad. To this day tostones are one of my favorite things to eat, I like them with some kind of garlic added, we used garlic salt but some people pound raw garlic right into the plantains. Sometimes they are served with raw garlic puree which although I love the sentiment, can be a bit too harsh. I love tostones with chimichurri or garlic aioli. Tostones are very similar to french fries however in that they need plenty of salt, or they can be bland.

A few minutes later you could hear my father’s footsteps approaching, and the back door being swung open. When he saw what we were doing he smiled and yelled “Tostones!’. He laughed and reached over and grabbed one right away, not waiting which caused my mother to roll her eyes. When my father spoke Spanish it seemed so natural, so normal, and it always sounded musical to me in a way, like it had its own rhythm. Whenever he liked something he said “Que Rico” and even though my Spanish was limited I understood innately what he was saying, even though I didn’t learn exactly what those words meant until years later in Spanish class. I heard him tell my mother that dinner was “Que rico” and that he was going to watch the news. She told him I made the tostones, with minimal help, he laughed and looked at me.

“Tostones huh? Maybe I’ll show you how to make pasteles, if you really want to learn how to make Puerto Rican food”

Later on that year my father did teach me to make pasteles, a sort of Puerto Rican tamale, but they were so much work I couldn’t stay interested. It’s the reason there is a cottage industry of Puerto Rican people making hundreds of pasteles and selling them at Christmas time.

When I got older I remembered making tostones as the first time I ever actually cooked anything. It was fun, I liked it, but the idea of becoming a chef didn’t happen until many years later, there weren’t many famous chefs around when I was small, so almost no one thought of that as a career choice. But when I did eventually decide to pursue cooking, those plantains reminded me that maybe I was headed that way and didn’t even know.

Just like Marcel Proust and his madeleines, every time I eat tostones I am transported back to my parent’s kitchen, learning to fry them in lard, watching my mother and trying to replicate the care she took peeling the plantains and showing me how to pound them out just so, to ensure it cooked evenly. Cooking with my mom sparked a lifelong curiosity about food and where it comes from, something I still cling to when I remember her.

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If you’re curious about what was on the radio, or what we listened to in my house, I made a short playlist.

Playlist

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