Panapen (breadfruit) Carnage - Tostone Making

My sister was visiting and we ate loads of things from the yard including breadfruit tostones. After surveying the allowable transport list I sent her home with avocados and a panapen. She carted that thing through New York and home to California and now needs a refresher on what to do with it! This is the carnage from preparing one that was ripe but not "nueva" and not "maduro." You can make tostones from slightly soft ones but hers is still hard and just leaking a bit of white latex on its skin. Just perfect for doing all kinds of things. (yes I said latex)

I had to have Amparo show me how to do it since cookbooks simply say to cut it into pieces, fry it, smash it, fry it again and whala! Not quite true. First off it is gonna be difficult to cut into quarters. You will be thinking that this can not be right and can't possibly be edible.

Next you have to cut away all the parts with these sponge like little holes - cutting it little by little so you actually get some of the fruit. Keep cutting until the little holes are no more.

Then you want to pare off the skin which is a very thin layer. It has a really cool design on it - kind of honeycombish.



You will be left with some pieces like this! Float them in salted water (helps remove latex and starch) while you clean up and heat the oil. They too have the honeycomb design which is really neat. At this point you can boil the pieces if it is a hard breadfruit (don't if it is maduro and blandito - old and soft). Boiled they kind of taste like artichoke hearts. For tostones you fry them in hot oil until they are kind of golden and cooked all the way through - texture will be like a flaky potato when you stab it with a fork (a few minutes on each side). Blot it off on a paper towel. Then you use a tostonera (smasher used to smash guineos, platanos, panapen) or a meat tenderizing mallet/hammer (flat side) or a rolling pin or can or palm of your hand and smash them flat. Float them in hot oil again until they look right and blot them off, salt them and whip out the mayoketchup (yes this is a real thing - mayonnaise and ketchup and garlic and culantro mixed up and delivered in a ketchup bottle just like salad dressing) or whatever you want to dip them in! And there you go - tostones de panapen. Mi favorito! They kind of are phyllodough-flakey if the breadfruit is maduro (old and soft). Kind of potato-like if they are joven (young). And there you have it...what to do with the 6 pound thing you dragged through the airport! Enjoy! (a web search for panapen or breadfruit will probably reveal more recipes)

Stuff from Around the Yard

It is wonderful to have flowers to cut and bring in. Sometimes I just use foliage from the crotons and it makes a really nice display.

This tiny fruit is an acerola. It has more vitamin C in it than any other fruit. You can chuck it into a smoothie or just nibble when cruising around the yard.

This is a new one for us. It looks like some kind of annon...same family as corazons and llang llang. The fruit has very interesting scale like skin...wonder what it will taste like?

Plop plop, down go the breadfruit - the seed ones. I was watching them and checked just yesterday and they were hard. Today they plopped on their own and I got them before the bugs did!

Here are the seeds cleaned up. Next stop is the boiling water, then the fridge, then under the knife to get the outer coating off and then the salt. They taste like little potatoes and are good to snack on!