Platanos & Homemade Salsa

A close relative to bananas, though larger, starchier, and generally less sweet, plantains are a staple of Nicaraguan cuisine. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner platanos are served in one form or another. If you don't like them at first, you will!
Most farms and quintas grow at least a few plantain trees, their gigantic green leaves and spectacular flowers making sure you don't forget this is the tropics. Plantain and banana trees flourish during our rainy season, and continue to produce fruit throughout the dry times. Every year new trees are planted amongst our coffee bushes to provide shade, guaranteeing me a constant supply of plantains in the kitchen.
Platanos require cooking in order to be palatable, and their form and flavor vary greatly depending on when and how they are cooked. Green unripe platanos are frequently fried up as a side dish, sliced in rounds or in the case of tajadas, in long thin strips. In the latter, plantains serve kind of as nachos, topped with meat or cheese or anything you want. As I inherited a local mandoline slicer over a year ago and have never used it, I decided it was time:

Tajada Time!

Slicing plantains so thin was time-consuming, not to mention a bit dangerous; bare hands near a wide blade required careful attention. I wish I had taken a picture of the uncooked strips to demonstrate how delicate they were.

Here I am frying them up in a generous pool of sunflower oil.

The ideal tajada is thin and crispy like a potato chip. After a few batches, I got the hang of it!

All the hard work paid off when the tajadas were served! We topped them with refried beans, soy "meat," shredded cabbage, and my new homemade hot sauce--see below for recipe. On the side I served cooked chayote squash.

I am always experimenting with new salsa recipes, this one is a favorite. and very easy! The recipe I found calls for jalapeños, for which I substituted our local chile pepper, congo. Congos are tiny so I used a whole handful--use your own discretion when choosing spiciness level. Hot peppers, along with several tomatoes and a few cloves of garlic are tossed with olive oil and then broiled.Once the tomatoes are blackened, remove from oven and cool. Peel off tomato skins, then blend it all up. Add cilantro, salt, and a squeeze of fresh lemon. that's it: roasty, flavorful, spicy sauce!

¡Buen provecho!

what's growing on?

Despite devastating dryness, the farm grows on! I am holding back on too much planting for a while, as I sharply ride the learning curve of dry season farming. However, with the creative assistance of our long term visitor and farming aficionado, Payita, the farm is not just a dust bowl!

Taking advantage of the shady chayotera, where dense chayote vines enthusiastically climb and twine, Paige established a beautiful bed of arugula, cabbage, carrots, and cilantro.
Protected from the fierce sunlight yet thriving on its nourishing warmth, the seedlings enjoy the ultimate natural greenhouse!

Perhaps you remember the papaya seedlings I started almost a YEAR AGO?? Standing tall at over 6 feet high, the papaya trees are now basking in tropical sun, flowering, and finally fruiting!

The papaya fruit emerges from a pollinated female flower. I was lucky to end up with at least one male plant, identified by the long skinny flower stalks, pictured below, and at least 2 hermaphrodite plants.

A hermaphrodite or "perfect" plant is the ideal papaya variety; although in severe weather conditions, a plant may change genders! Crazy.

The papayas grew fast with little attention, and now provide desperately-needed shade along the perimeter of the garden. Superstars!

The forever hardy congo chili pepper is at home on our farm, self propagating everywhere I turn around. This is the most common chili you will run into in Nicaragua-- and don't be fooled by its tiny size either. Once a congo ripens to fire engine red, hot DAMN!

an eclectic harvest

No pumpkins, no squash. no corn cobs. It might say Octubre on the calendar, but in my garden the date is irrelevant.

Alternating heavy rains with brilliant sunshine keeps mi jardin abundantly fruitful with not so usual autumn crops. My horn of plenty is filled with an eclectic october harvest:

Lemongrass, pictured above in foreground, after its haircut. Instead of simply trimming the browning ends, i decided to preserve some of this lusciously fragrant herb for later use, or for gifting.
I chopped some into pieces to freeze, bundled others to dry.

Lemony blades were everywhere when my assistant showed up to taste test.

tangy, like a tropical catnip

Better than squash, a new favorito mio is chayote (rhymes with coyote). This beautiful fruta loca grows on long luxurious vines, dangling from an overhead ramada (in the background of my garden photo above).

A flavor comparable to a summer squash yet more nutty, we enjoy chayote cooked in casseroles, diced in omelets, or simply sauteed in garlic and olive oil.

In between rains while the garden is drying out, we find time to get out for a beach day, or a volcano hike, and soak up the October sun.