Rellenitos de Plátano (Plantain Dumplings Filled with Sweet Black Beans)

Variations

• Honey or icing sugar: Korean Wikipedia gives both as the finish. Either goes on straight after draining.
• Without the chocolate: a bean filling with only cinnamon and sugar. The filling Korean Wikipedia describes is Guatemalan or Maya-style chocolate melted in water; this recipe uses dark chocolate where that is hard to find.
• How far it is from fufu: the same plantain boiled and mashed, taken the other way. Fufu pounds unripe plantain with cassava into a dough that stretches; this mashes ripe plantain into a soft one. Fufu says of its own dough that "that stretch comes from gelatinised starch plus the sheer mechanical work of pounding."
• The other end of the ripening is tacacho con cecina: green plantain, roasted over charcoal and mashed with lard into a savoury ball. It has so little sugar that it can sit over the coals until the middle is cooked, which is exactly what this ripe plantain cannot do in oil.
• How far it is from daifuku: both are a sweetened bean paste wrapped in something. Daifuku stretches a glutinous rice dough thin around it; rellenitos press a dough that does not stretch into a thick cup and fold it over.
• About the photograph: it shows them frying in a deep pan over a wood fire in Guatemala.

Tips

• Boiling first is the trick. Red red states the ripe plantain's problem: "A ripe plantain has already turned most of its starch to sugar, so fried like a potato it burns outside before the middle is done." The method Korean Wikipedia gives boils it for about ten minutes until soft, then mashes and cools it. By the time it meets the oil the middle is already cooked, so the frying has one job: colouring the outside.
• Keep the oil low anyway. The middle is no longer a worry, but the sugar on the surface is still there. As red red puts it, "The sugar in a ripe plantain already browns fast at that temperature, so at 180°C the outside burns before the middle is cooked" — and here, with the middle already cooked, burning is the only thing left to happen. At 160-170°C, take them out as soon as they are deep gold (deep-frying).
• Use black-skinned plantains. Red red describes the opposite case: "A yellow plantain is still starch: fried, it is not sweet and tastes like a dull potato." In a dessert the sweetness has to come from the plantain.
• The dough does not stretch, so it is folded, not pulled. Fufu's stretch comes from pounding the starch of unripe plantain. A ripe plantain has turned that starch to sugar and is only mashed, so this dough will not stretch. That is why it is pressed thick and its edges drawn up over the filling rather than pulled thin: the plantain is the shell and the beans are inside. Drain the plantain well and let the mash cool, or the cup will not hold its shape.
• Fry the filling stiff and let it cool before it goes in. Daifuku explains why its filling is no trouble: "bean paste has already been cooked down, which is why it causes no trouble" The beans need the same. A loose filling turns to steam in the oil and pushes the shell open — what chả giò says about its own fried rolls: "Water left in the filling turns to steam as they fry and pushes the wrapper apart" (wrapping and sealing).
• The ingredients are the everyday plate's. Korean Wikipedia describes the dish as made from black beans and ripe plantain, two ingredients common all over Latin America. Sugar, chocolate and cinnamon are what turn them into a dessert.