Guest post: Makabou chips with Julianna

I’ve got my rooster apron on because I’m going to make fried makabou (ma-ka-boo) chips. I have never eaten or cooked these before. How exciting!

Well, as you can see, they look like short, fat, green bananas or plantains. Most Caribbean folks eat bananas and their many look-alike friends (plantains, etc) when they are green. They (the bananas, not Caribbean folk) generally taste generically starchy and so I’ve found frying to be the easiest/most forgiving first attempt.

So, I’ve sliced off the ends of the makabou and cut a lengthwise sliver, making it easier to remove the peel. Once peeled, I chopped it up into slices about a quarter inch thick. This isn’t for any culinary reason, I’m simply not much good at slicing. Then I put them in a frying pan with about a pan-bottom-covering-amount of hot canola/vegetable oil.

If you’re like me, you don’t just cook when you cook. You also check email, sweep, wash a few dishes, or clean up after the mess you’ve made preparing to cook and occasionally check in on your culinary creation. We call that “Island Time”. Sometimes things might get “burned”. It’s usually mostly fine though. Frying happens to be a good method of cooking when operating on island time.

Anyway, you can see the slight difference in shades of white between the ones I’ve already flipped and the completely uncooked one. I have no idea if they are done enough. They probably cooked for about 3 minutes on one side before I flipped them. I don’t know exactly. Long enough for me to wash my hands and clean up the counter a little. Also, I tossed a little salt on them while they were frying. When frying things you think will taste generically starchy, you can’t go wrong with a pinch of salt!

Okay, so this is a plate of the ones that are done (I tasted them and they are cooked all the way through).

This is the final plate. The ones that are “well-done” taste just fine, by the way. I do enjoy cooking with forgiving food! Makabou chip success!

Here is a sneak peak at what is likely to be the topic of the next culinary blog post:

These are boiled green bananas. Known to St. Lucians as “green figs” (fig is the Kweyol word for banana)(Kweyol is the St. Lucian creole, which apparently just happens to be called Creole, but in creole). They are starchy and eaten with butter and salt- á la a potato. The bananas have to be very, very green for them to not taste like you’ve just boiled a banana. More on that another time!