Green Banana Cakes (Pasteles):

WITH MEAT…….

Recipe for 5 people, 2 green banana cakes per person.

1. You will need 2 to 3 green bananas (depending on the size of the green bananas) for each Green Banana Cake. For 10 Green Banana Cakes you will need 20 to 30 green bananas.

2. A small pork’s thigh, or 1 lb. of pork’s thigh meat with out fat and grease.

3. Two large diced potatoes (one inch square pieces).

4. Olive oil, 1/2 a cup.

5. Coriander and Annatto (Sasón) seasoning 3 packets.

6. Adobo with black pepper, one teaspoon. (see the “Rice with Pigeon Peas” recipe below to see what Adobo and Sofrito are).

7. Sofrito, 2 large table spoons.

8. Sasón Accent seasoning, one packet.

9. Half of a teaspoon of salt.

10. Green Banana leaves, cooking paper and cooking or kite string.

11. Stuffed Olives. 12. 1/2 a can of Tomato Sauce.

First put on some rubber gloves, peeling green bananas will stain the hands and anything else it touches.

Making the Green Banana Pulp Mass.

1. Carefully peel the raw green bananas using a small knife, cut off the end points of the bananas and cut the banana peel down the middle to open the banana peel and using the small knife peel the banana peel off (avoid stains they don’t come out) throw away the peelings and use the inner banana and grate them or blend them in a blender into a very fine pulp mass.

Make a mixture of 1 teaspoon of salt, then mix 2 packets of Coriander and Annatto (Culantro y Achiote) seasoning, then mix this into 1/3 of a cup of olive oil in the blender, blend well and take this mixture and mix it well into the green banana pulp mass in your blender or by hand.

Making the stew filling.

1. First take the pork and remove all the fat and grease, until you have one pound of cleaned pork meat. Cut the meat into 1 inch piece. Place the cleaned pork meat into a pressure cooker and boil the meat in a pressure cooker for 20 minutes to tender the meat.

2. After the pork meat is cooked (tenderize) in the pressure cooker for 20 minutes, open it and add 2 peeled diced (one inch square) potatoes, boil the potatoes in the open pressure cooker with the meat until the potatoes are cooked.

3. Next take 2 large table spoons of olive oil and place it into a large frying pan. Heat the olive oil and add 2 large spoons of Sofrito, the Adobo with black pepper, the Sasón seasoning and stir fry the mix. After stir frying the mix, add one half of a can of Tomato Sauce to the mix, mix in the cooked potatoes, then add 10 stuffed olives and add the cooked tenderized pork meat. Cook and stir over a low flame until it boils.

Making the Green Banana Cakes.

Finding green banana leaves might be hard for some of you people, if you can not find the green banana leaves just use cooking paper for wrapping the cakes. But the banana leaves do give the Pasteles a special taste, so try and get them by all means.

Cut a 7″x7″ inch piece of banana leaf and spread it out on a large (over one foot square) piece of cooking paper. Take one spoon of the gravy of the stew and spread it on the banana leaf. Then take 3 large table spoons of the mixed green banana mass and spread it out evenly over the green banana leave only.

In the center of the spread out mixed green banana mass, place one heaping table spoon of the stew in the middle, this table spoon should have even parts of meat and potatoes with 2 stuffed olives for each cake.

Then carefully double the outer paper with all the ingredients in the middle to form the green banana cake to the size of the green banana leaf with the stew inside the green banana pulp mass. Then fold over all the over lapping paper to make a small package. Then tie it up with cooking string or kite string into a neat little package about 3 inches wide and 7 inches long.

Make as many cakes as you can with your ingredients until you run out of ingredients.

You may now either freeze the green banana cakes for future use, or you may boil them for eating right away.

Cooking the Green Banana Cakes.

First if the Green Banana Cakes are frozen let them thaw out then take a large pot and fill it half way with water, bring the water to a boil and place the wrapped Green Banana Cakes into the boiling water, let them boil for about 40 minutes. Serve 2 Green Banana Cakes with cooked white rice per person with stewed red beans if you like, but it can be eaten with rice alone with a nice salad on the side. And if you like Louisiana Hot Sauce, give the hot Green Banana Cake a even coating of Louisiana Hot Sauce to spice it up a little. Hmmmm! Delicious!