Mofongo

Mofongo () is a dish from Puerto Rico with plantains as its main ingredient. Plantains are picked green, cut into pieces and typically fried in more modern versions but can be boiled in broth or roasted, then mashed with salt, garlic, pork, broth, and cooking oil (olive oil, butter, and lard is typically used) in a wooden pilón (mortar and pestle). Cassava and sweet potato are boiled, then roasted or flash-fried; plantains can also be made in this method or roasted before flash-frying. The goal is to produce a tight ball of mashed plantains that will absorb the attending condiments and have either pork cracklings (chicharrón) or bits of bacon inside. It is traditionally served with fried meat and chicken broth soup. Particular flavors result from variations that include vegetables, chicken, shrimp, beef, or octopus packed inside or around the plantain orb.

==Origin and history== Mofongo is a traditional Puerto Rican dish combining influences from the cultures of the Greater Antilles island, descending from Spain, West Africa, and Taíno, where Puerto Rico gets most of its culture and roots. These cultural influences also resulted in the creation of mofongo's distantly related but notably different West African dish fufu, but mofongo's unique flavor comes from a combination of West African flavors and the Taíno Indian culinary tradition of mashing root vegetables, mixed with Spanish culinary influences. Fufu, a sticky dough pulled and eaten by hand, is made from various starchy vegetables. Fufu was bought to the Caribbean by Africans in the Spanish New World colonies. Each country developed their own unique dish borne from their cultural origins and influences that were very different from original native dish such as Trinidad and Tobago (pong plantain also known as tum-tum), Cuba (fufu de plátano and machuquillo), Dominican Republic (mangú), Haiti (tomtom) and Puerto Rico (mofongo and funche criollo); this also most likely includes Colombia (cayeye), Ecuador (bolón), Costa Rica (angú), Amazon region, and Peru (tacacho).