The Caribbean · Volume 13, The Pilón, the Colony and the Frontier

Mofongo

Name: Mofongo
Total time: 30 min
Yield: Serves 3 to 4
Cuisine: Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic
Ingredients: 3 to 4 green plantains, peeled and cut into pieces roughly an inch and a half; about 1 cup oil, for frying; 3 to 4 cloves, crushed garlic; about 200g (7oz) chicharrón or fried pork belly; 2 tbsp butter, olive oil or the reserved frying oil; a splash hot broth, to loosen; to serve garlic-lime broth (caldo de ajo), or a side of shrimp or pork, to serve

Puerto Rico

Mofongo, Puerto Rican mashed fried plantain with garlic and pork: a golden dome of mashed fried plantain studded with visible flecks of garlic and crisp pork cracklings, set beside a small pool of pale garlic broth in a shallow bowl.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time: 30 minutes

Researched: Researched from 23 sources in the brief, none yet linked in the text
Reviewed: Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked: Not yet cooked and reported

by Puerto Rico

The clearest case of technique surviving intact is the pounding tradition itself. Mofongo, made by pounding hot fried plantain in a pilón, and mangú, made by pounding boiled plantain with a majador, are both explicitly likened by historians on both islands to West and Central African fufu. Puerto Rican historian Cruz Miguel Ortiz Cuadra traces the word "mofongo" itself to the Kikongo mfwenge-mfwenge, a great quantity of anything. But the two islands' own historians do not agree on the direction the dish travelled: Dominican historian Carlos Esteban Deive argues in Culturas afrocaribeñas that mofongo was imported into the Dominican Republic from Puerto Rico, which would make it a Puerto Rican dish carrying an African name and an African technique, rather than an unmediated African transplant to either island. This chapter states the disagreement rather than resolving it. Dominican sociologist Dagoberto Tejeda makes the same argument about words as objects: guandul, the Dominican word for pigeon pea, is traced by researchers Celsa Albert and Carlos Larrazábal Blanco to the Kikongo wandu, and concón, the crisped rice prized rather than discarded at the bottom of the pot, is traced by the same two researchers to Bantu naming practice, though this second etymology rests on secondary cultural commentary rather than a primary linguistics source and is offered here as plausible, not settled.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Mofongo

Serves 3 to 4 . 30 minutes

Ingredients

3 to 4 green plantains, peeled and cut into pieces roughly an inch and a half
about 1 cup oil, for frying
3 to 4 cloves, crushed garlic
about 200g (7oz) chicharrón or fried pork belly
2 tbsp butter, olive oil or the reserved frying oil
a splash hot broth, to loosen
to serve garlic-lime broth (caldo de ajo), or a side of shrimp or pork, to serve

Method

Fry the plantain pieces until the surface is crisp but the interior still yields, 5 to 8 minutes depending on oil temperature.
Pound hot, while still releasing steam, in a pilón with garlic and chicharrón or fried pork belly, roughly two minutes of firm, circular, downward strokes with the maceta, working in batches if the pilón is small, until the mixture is homogeneous but still slightly coarse, not a smooth purée.
Work in butter, olive oil or the reserved frying oil at the end, sometimes with a splash of hot broth to loosen it.
Form into a dome and serve classically with a garlic-lime broth, caldo de ajo, or a side of shrimp or pork.

Notes

The pilón is Taíno in origin, and Puerto Rican food writing describes mofongo as told a golpe de pilón, by the mortar's own strike, a phrase this chapter takes literally rather than as decoration.

What a modern chef changes

Two-stage frying and a deliberate pilón

Rung 01

Method

Fry the plantain in two stages rather than one: a lower first pass to cook it through, then a hot flash second pass immediately before pounding, so the piece reaches the pilón at the highest possible temperature and steam output the technique actually depends on.
Render the pork belly sous vide first, low and even, then finish it hard and fast in the Big Green Egg for real crackling before it ever meets the pilón, rather than frying raw belly straight through and losing the textural contrast mofongo is built to carry.
Dehydrate a portion of extra plantain separately into thin, brittle chips, ground in the spice grinder into a dusting for the finished dome, a genuine textural counterpoint rather than a garnish for its own sake.

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