~ {{ The Fried Foods from Around the World thread }} ~

[Hurricane Annie]

 Here in the Antipodes we have  "green bananas",  used by our Pasifika brethren from the Islands, for cooking. They are bigger firmer greener banana  used much like potato or yam.  Baked, toasted, boiled.  I was never brave enough to try, when I lived in an area where shops  sold them as staple.

 As an aside; while studying Ghana at primary school [age around 9yr], our teacher  cooked us up a batch  of chopped bananas [in place of plantain] and paprika. I  have experimented at home since, but it has never tasted the same as on the old electric fry pan  in the classroom

Seems to me that "Green Bananas" would be a better match for the Ghanian dish w/ hot red pepper powder instead of paprika (sweets pepper). Ripe Cavendish bananas are too sweet and soft. You want something starchy. Also in the West we need to move away from Cavendish Bananas. They're one breath away from falling vulnerable to one particular disease, because they're all clones from each other.

The irony is there are over 4000 (?) species of bananas of all colours and sizes. We should not be in this position. The global production of bananas is dominated by just a handful (less than 5) companies in the world, all of them using the same Cavendish banana clone. People in the 1st World need to learn to eat "different foods."

 Now you have me off on a gardening tangent....  I will only briefly divert down this path...

  I was given a scrubby sprout  of ornamental banana.  It was a small piece  that nearly died a few times, ripped out by neighbours dog, ridden  by children, moved a couple of times  - [long story short] it grew higher than the house, had a stem a a few feet in diameter  and had a  huge purple flower  that looked like a giant feathered  elephants trunk to me.   My  female friends  took another perspective shall we say, got the Vapours over it   and insisted I chop it down and never grow it in my front yard again.

 Back to the fried foods - our fruit and vegetables have been modified so much for commercial use, that what he have now are a  pitiful pallid selection that are unrecognisable  from the original.  So many of our weeds today were the  nutritious sautéed salads of yester years.  Until recent times people ate off the land  and gathered  from the meadows, supplemented by the odd rabbit  and water fowl.  We have lost  vast knowledge  of what is edible, what is not  and how to process it. To make it palatable.  There is a movement towards Urban Foraging, it is still considered eccentric and frowned upon

[Mercury Wells]

Pipian Verde (Pumpking seed sauce/paste)?

[J. Wilhelm]

Pipian Verde (Pumpking seed sauce/paste)?

Well, that certainly qualifies as fried, though it's a sauce to be placed on meat, poultry or fish. If it were the pumpkin seeds alone, as a snack, those are fried and known as Pepitas. As Pipián, the pumpkin seed sauce is by definition one of many types of Mole (mole being the native Mexican name for "sauce."). On Mole Poblano, the hero of the paste would be various nuts, peanuts as well as peppers, chocolate and spices. You have many variations of Mole depending on which types of ingredients you use. When you use pumpkin seeds and Tomatillos (small green tomatoes) then it's known as Mole Verde (Green Mole), I'm thinking that's the same as Pipián Verde. Most Moles including Pipián are made by frying the ground ingredients repeatedly and continuously - with the exception of Guacamole which is very very different (as most people know it's made from avocado which is never cooked) .

Making Mole from scratch is a day long procedure, and guaranteed to smoke the house and trigger smoke alarms, inviting the Fire Department to your doorstep. Most people just buy the paste ready made at the market... Or of you're lazy like me buy the paste in jars at the supermarket.

*********Edit

Mole is considered to be a prehispanic food, and two states in Mexico are considered the most important in Mole history. One state is Puebla which is just about 30 miles from Mexico City in the Valley of Mexico. The other state is Oaxaca in Southwestern Mexico,  which is considered to have the greatest concentration of native people and culture.

The video below show the *most traditional* way of making Mole. Outside of very traditional Native communities, few people make Mole like this; it's not very convenient for modern life, but the video is an educational production made (idk how long ago) by a chocolate company to promote their product, and you can see the roasting of seeds and spices on a "Comal" plate , grinding of cocoa and nuts and tomatoes with "Petates" made from volcanic rock. Then you see the ingredients fried in oil inside "Ollas" the traditional pottery used by natives before the conquest. More modern methods use machines to produce powders and pastes you can buy at the market. Nestlé at one point purchased one of the most famous brands (Doña María) which you can buy at a supermarket (sold on a jar). I can get those jars here in Texas at my local super.

Making mole negro sauce in Oaxaca, Mexico

If you skip to 10:10 on this video, you can see the traditional presentation of Mole Poblano, Mole Rojo and Pipián (Mole Verde) on a single plate.

Gringos Eat Comida Poblana (Mole, tacos árabes, camotes, and cemitas)

[Synistor 303]

I made a chicken/chocolate mole once... Mighty were the preparations, and long and arduous the making of the dish. Tasted amazing! The only 'problem' was it had bananas in it and our daughter didn't like bananas, so I didn't make it again. I might give it another shot soon...

Now tell me, it it pronounced 'mole' as in hole, or something more fancy like moo-lay?

[J. Wilhelm]

I made a chicken/chocolate mole once... Mighty were the preparations, and long and arduous the making of the dish. Tasted amazing! The only 'problem' was it had bananas in it and our daughter didn't like bananas, so I didn't make it again. I might give it another shot soon...

Now tell me, it it pronounced 'mole' as in hole, or something more fancy like moo-lay?

The E is not mute. Use straight Latin pronunciation of vowels. "Mo" is pronounced like in the word "modern" . ""Le" is pronounced as in "Les", short for Lester.

You might want to look at different recipes online. Mole is a bit like a stew, there are many kinds and you can throw just about anything into it. The primary ingredients are chile peppers, some kind of nut, pumpkin seeds. Poblano adds chocolate, pecans, peanuts and tomato. Green (or Verde aka Pipián) is mostly pumpkin seeds, spice chile peppers and green tomato sauce, which makes it a bit bitter, children won't like the green kind, but adults will like it. The most basic Poblano style mole (the one with Chocolate) you buy in a jar is little more than ground peanuts, chile peppers, spices, chocolate and toasted crackers! Nestlé purchased and briefly owned one of the most popular brands in Mexico (Doña María) just a few years ago, and they began to export to the US for regular non ethnic supermarkets (at least in Southwestern states). Walmart followed suit by importing two different brands, who offer red, green and poblano among other types (like 5 kinds). It's not half bad, actually! You can spruce it up with tomatoes, onion and nuts to make it better, according to online tutorials.