Right around the time I was planning my trip to Puerto Rico, Stacey Viera mentioned Puerto Rican lasagna to me. What on Earth is Puerto Rican lasagna!? Well, it's a combination of sweet plantains, ground beef, olives, raisins, onions and peppers. I absolutely love sweet plantains, so my interest was definitely piqued.
Once in Puerto Rico, I mentioned this dish to my friend Laura, but unfortunately we did not have a chance to make it at her home: there's just never enough time on vacations to eat at as many restaurants as you want or to make as many dishes in the kitchen as you want. Instead, Laura sent me this recipe when I said I'll try to make it in my own kitchen.
Of course I decided to make a few changes:
1. Sweet plantains are incredibly sweet as is, so I decided not to add raisins.See how all these changes worked out ;)
2. I also decided to use red peppers instead of green ones because they just looked really pretty in the store.
3. I decreased the amount of plantains used and made twice as much meat mixture (half of which I froze to be used at a later date).
4. Even though this is not your typical lasagna, I wanted to add cheese.
5. Finally, I decided to eliminate 3 tablespoons of melted butter.
Puerto Rican Lasagna (serves 4-6 people)
Printable Recipe
Ingredients
meat mixture
2 tablespoons olive oil
5 large garlic cloves, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 red peppers, chopped
1 cup sliced olives (I used the green ones stuffed with Pepper Jack cheese)
4 tablespoons white wine
the rest of the ingredients
1 pound ground beef
canola oil
4 ripe plantains, peeled, sliced into 1/4 inch thickness lengthwise
salt
1 cup shredded Queso Blanco cheese {Note: turns out this cheese doesn't melt...pretty much at all. So I'd recommend using Mozzarella or Cheddar}
2 eggs, beaten
Directions
1. Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Add all of the ingredients from "meat mixture" and saute for five minutes.
2. Stir in ground beef and cook till it has browned. Don't over cook it so that it gets dry. {Note: you will only use 1/2 of this mixture in this recipe. The rest you can eat with rice and beans or freeze and use at a later date.}
3. Preheat the oven to 350. Heat canola oil in a separate skillet (I used cast iron), and brown plantains on both sides. Immediately season them with a bit of salt.
4. Using a baking dish sprayed with PAM, layer your lasagna. My layers were: plantains/meat/cheese, repeated twice.
My thoughts:
1. This was relatively simple to do.
2. I absolutely LOVED the ground beef with peppers, onions and olives.
3. I'm so glad I did not add raisins: the plantains were sweet enough.
4. Definitely will use a melt-able cheese next time.
5. This is definitely not a lasagna in the "normal" sense of a word: it reminded me more of a Shepard's pie.
6. Don't make too much of this: after eating it four times, I'm getting a bit tired of it :)
Still, I'm really glad I tried a new-to-me recipe!
Oh, and those 3 tablespoons of butter I decided to leave out: DON'T!
