Page 98 - quebec
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Top: The graveyard site at Castillo San Felipe del Morro.
                                                                            Bottom: Plantains are a Puerto Rican mainstay.




                  also discovered my favorite Puerto Rican dish: pas-  If You Go
                  telon. By this time, I felt like I had eaten every plan-
                  tain-based dish in existence including tostones (plain,   Hilton Ponce Golf & Casino Resort, 1150 Caribe Ave., Ponce,
                  fried plantain slices), mofongo (stuffed fried plantain   00716, Puerto Rico, 787-259-7676, hiltonponceresort.com
                              o
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            potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind), plátanos en al-  Palmas Del Mar Oceano Beach Resort, 787-850-0042, pal-
            mibar (a plantain dessert), platanutres (plantain chips, which   masdelmar.com
            hotels could probably sell in a vending machine) and boiled
            amarillos (a breakfast cereal of boiled plantains mashed with   Sheraton Puerto Rico Hotel & Casino, 200 Convention Blvd.,
            milk, which tastes way better than it sounds). But there was   San Juan,  Puerto Rico 00907,  787-993-3500,  sheratonpuer-
            one more plantain dish — pastelon (a sort of lasagna made   toricohotelcasino.com
            with plantains).
            When our host mentioned he was going to make a special
            treat for us that was a traditional Puerto Rican recipe contain-
            ing plantains, I almost screamed, “Please, no more plantains!”
            Thank goodness I didn’t. The pastelon he baked was one plan-
            tain recipe I wish I had. That dish, and the DonQ Rum served
            alongside, made our last dinner in Puerto Rico a delicious,
            happy celebration of the traditional. (In Puerto Rico, I guess
            the Bunch of Bananas song lyrics could be changed from “I’ve
            got a bunch of bananas and a bottle of gin; they keep the hun-
            ger out and the happiness in” to “I’ve got a bunch of plantains
            and a bottle of rum; they keep the hunger out and, then, the
            happiness come.
            98    Wine Dine & Travel  Summer 2014
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