CurdNerds

This amazing looking recipe is reprinted here courtesy of FoodieNYC.com, a wonderful blog written by chef and Gothamist Food contributor Joe DeSalazar

I promised I'd check back as I looked to perfect the plantain crusted goat cheese dish.  You may have read the first edition already, where I discuss how I recently came up with this idea.     While I loved the flavors behind the original dish I made, I couldn't crack the presentation - I needed to find a better plantain to goat cheese ratio for each bite.

The solution came to me randomly while walking home from work the other day.  I'd cut long chunks of the ripe plantain while raw.  With a long sharp knife tip, I turned the plantain chunk on its end and created a hole through the entire piece.  I stuffed the hole with a mixture of goat cheese, chopped rosemary, olive oil, salt and pepper. The best way to get the cheese into the plantain was to push the cheese mixture into a single corner of a small ziplock bag.  After rolling the bag tight into a pastry bag shape, I clipped the corner of the bag with scissors and piped the cheese through the hole and into the plantain. 

I did this for an entire plantain and stuffed the pieces back inside the plantain skin and re-wrapped  it as if it were back in its original state.  I roasted the plantain at 300 for about 25 minutes until soft and firm.  The skin keeps the plantain soft and avoids letting the pieces dry out.  I placed a small plantain chip on the rim of each piece of plantain.  You can thinly slice and fry unripe green plantains or you can buy a bag at your local bodega.  The balsamic reduction is as described in my original post  - it adds a sweet acidic tang that rounds out the flavors of the creamy goat cheese and sweet plantain. 

The pieces of plantain were small enough that a person could eat a whole piece at once - it becomes a flavorful explosion of tastes and textures within a single, large bite.    I may have to add this to my canape arsenal - the addition of rosemary and the crunchy plantain chip take the original idea to another level.