Jun 28, 2010 — On this Sandwich Monday, we try the jibarito, a sandwich with fried plantains in place of bread.
n p r n e w s
on:
NCPR is supported by:
This is a Visitor-Supported website.
More from NPR
May 21, 2013 — As it roared through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, packing winds of up to 200 mph, the twister flattened buildings. Searchers continue to look for survivors and those who were killed.
May 21, 2013 — Tim Cook will address reports that his company pays billions less than it should in U.S. taxes each year at a Tuesday hearing in Washington. According to a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Apple avoids the tax payments by shifting profits to subsidiaries in Ireland.
May 21, 2013 — Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman and outgoing acting Commissioner Steven Miller will be grilled. The IRS is under fire because some conservative groups' applications for tax-exempt status were given extra scrutiny in recent years. An inspector general has called the actions "inappropriate."
May 21, 2013 — The deadly collapse of a textile factory in Bangladesh has heightened awareness about cheap clothes. Many Americans have become used to inexpensive clothing, but the garments are also discarded at a remarkable rate: Billions of pounds of clothing are recycled each year; nearly half is exported.
May 21, 2013 — Ray Manzarek, whose keyboard was a trademark of The Doors sound, died at the age of 74 on Monday.
Exterior of restaurant. (NPR)
Sandwich Monday: The Mighty Jibarito
by Ian Chillag
Jun 28, 2010 — On this Sandwich Monday, we try the jibarito, a sandwich with fried plantains in place of bread.See this
Explore this
Reported by
Ian Chillag
Long before Colonel Sanders replaced bread with fried chicken, a man who had no bread but a whole lot of bad judgment did the same thing with deep-fried plantains. He sandwiched them around steak, American cheese, and an obscene amount of mayonnaise, and the jibarito was born. Some say this happened in Puerto Rico, some say at Borinquen Restaurant in Chicago. Wherever its origin, let's just agree the inventor should be worshipped as a God.
I ordered one with roast pork. Girlfriend Nora went with the vegetarian. Here's how that went:
Nora: "I'll have the vegetarian jibarito."
Waiter: "One steak jibarito, coming up."
Nora: "No, vegetarian."
Waiter: "What?"
When you go to a restaurant, sometimes it can be hard to decide what to order. Here's a rule: if a restaurant has an oil painting of one of their sandwiches on the wall, you should order that sandwich.
Nora: It took a special kind of culinary genius to come up with this. Who sees a plantain, and thinks, you know what, that'd be better with pork and mayonnaise?
Ian: If you're a banana, and you want to disappoint your parents, this is the life you choose.
Ian: So the vegetarian sandwich is just the regular sandwich without the regular stuff?
Nora: I think they replaced some of the meat with more mayonnaise.
We also ordered mofongo, which is a mashed plantain ball with bits of garlic and pork cracklings. Delicious, yes, but sort of like having an already digested version of your sandwich right next to your sandwich.
We ride our bikes home, and both of us find our hands are slippery on the handlebars. "Ah, mayonnaise," Nora says. "Nature's moisturizer."
I think for a second that the bike ride will help work off the meal. But we would have to ride all the way to Puerto Rico to burn all the calories, and I would almost certainly end up eating another jibarito when I got there.
Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.9(MDAxNzgwMTg5MDEyMTQ4Nzc4MjdiNWVmMw004))
Missing some content? Check the source: NPR
Copyright(c) 2013, NPR
