.: evil jungle prince :.

This recipe intrigued me because I haven't much experience with plantains. Fortunately there exists a large Mexican/Latin community locally and plantains are never far away. (Though seemingly a world away, I am after all only a short drive from Mexico.)

1. This dish begins by scraping 1/2 cup of fresh coconut from the real McCoy -- a real live coconut. If you haven't done this before, whack the coconut with a hammer along the scored section and watch it crack rewardingly into two halves. Scrape the coconut meat out with a coconut scraping tool (which can be purchased at any Filipino market near you).

2. Next I dry-roasted the fresh coconut with 2 tsps coriander seeds, 3 dried chili peppers, 1 clove garlic, and 1 cinnamon stick in a pan until the coconut turned brown. After cooling for 5 mins, I placed the mixture into a blender (minus the cinnamon stick which is discarded) with 2 cups water and processed until the liquid was blended and milky.

3. I then cut 2 plantains into 1-inch pieces and placed them into a bowl with 4-5 shallots, 2 green chili peppers slit lengthwise. The mixture was then placed into a heated wok with 2 tsp oil and fried until the shallots turned soft.

4. After the shallots became soft, I then added 1 tsp turmeric, the coconut mixture liquid, and about 2 tsp salt. This mixture was cooked for 5 mins.

5. Now 3 tomatoes (quartered) were added and the mixture allowed to cook for 10 mins, adding salt to taste.

6. Finally I heated 1 tsp oil and added 1/2 tsp mustard seeds. After they began to sputter, I also added 10 curry leaves to the oil. This oil was then placed into the curry.

7. The process was completed by adding the juice of 1 lime and cooking the mixture for an additional 3 mins.