Plantains are another staple in the Cuban diet and are cooked in a variety of ways. We eat ripe plantains, soft, sweet and fried. These are called "platano maduro". We eat plantains in an unripe stage, flattened like a big chip, fried until crispy and then salted. These are called "tostones." And finally, we eat plantains the African way, boiled semi-ripe and then mashed (like mashed potatoes), with olive oil, garlic and chorizo (sausage) mixed in. This mashed plantain dish is one of my favorites and in Cuba is called "fufu," the same as it is called in Africa. I once entertained some Ghanaian friends and cooked a full course Cuban meal for them. They exclaimed, "You know how to cook fufu?" I said, of course, it's a classic Cuban dish. They said, "it's a classic Ghanaian dish." That's when I understood that in Cuba, we had inhereted the recipe and the name of the mashed plantain dish from our slave ancestors.
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