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Today, I learned in class how to make Puerto Rican Tostones in Spanish Class. To spice things up from my usual repertoire, I’ll explain how to make tostones and explain how Puerto Rican cuisine came about.

In terms of international fusion of cuisine between cultures, there is none other like the Puerto Rican cuisine. I was so fascinated by their mixture and diversity that I had to write about it in this blog. Next week, I’ll post one final “secret” recipe in my family for the semester. Anyway, I think this puerto rican dish: tostones is delicious and very simple, even for college students to make. The ingredients you will need are: plantains (a bigger and harder type of banana), frying pan, cooking oil, garlic, salt, and paper bags. If you want to learn more about the difference between bananas and plantains click here. A great sauce for this snack is a great mixture of ketchup and mayo. Check it out here.

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First,  take the plantains and slice them into nice pieces. Then soak them in salt water for around 15 to 20 minutes. Then fry them on the frying pan. After frying them, soak the oil up and smash them into a palate-like shape. After doing that, you can re-fry the plantains and continue cooking.While doing this, you can add some garlic powder to add some taste. Once their all over get some sauce out and go enjoy this snack.

Puerto Rico, has a long history of mixing different cultures from places like the US, Europe, and Africa. There are cases like this in Asian culture as well. There are many cases in Korean cuisine where both Chinese and Japanese culture and cuisine has influenced Korean dishes. Instances where ingredients and sauces from abroad are mixed with our, Korean, way of cooking and creates a fresh new dish. These creative dishes tend to go “viral” among us and become widely popular among us. (one example are black bean noodles)

picture 1: http://foodnetwork.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/food/fullset/2004/1/23/1/ss1d17_tostones.jpg.rend.sniipadlarge.jpeg

picture 2: http://f.tqn.com/y/latinfood/1/W/G/3/-/-/2355182212_a974a37f45_o.jpg