Indonesian Tofu Satay for #Food of the World

For this month's #Food of the world event, we are visiting the beautiful island of Aruba. It is an island country in the southern Caribbean sea. It is one of the 4 constituent countries that form the Kingdom of Netherlands along with the Netherlands, Curaçao and Sint Maarten. 

Traditional Aruban cuisine includes dishes with goat meat, stoba-stew pots filled with vegetables that are locally grown - fish and maize. Finding a vegetarian recipe turned out to be quite challenging. Luckily Mir, my dear blog buddy and a fellow food of the world member, offered to help because her mom is Aruban. I jumped right away and took up the offer.

She emailed me quite a few vegetarian options for Aruban food. She also mentioned that Aruba has a very large population of Indonesian because it is a Dutch island and Indonesia was the largest former Dutch Island. and Arubans also eat a lot of Indonesian food.

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Tostones (Fried Raw Green Plantains) with Mojo Sauce

I made these Tostones or fried green plantains for Cuban meal earlier this week. From what I've read, fried green plantains are very popular and pull together most any Latin Caribbean meal. They have different names (tostones, patacones, tajadas, mariquitas) and shapes depending on the country.
These crunchy slabs of fried plantains make a very addictive snack or appetizer when served with lightly salted or with a garlicky mojo sauce. This recipe is from Viva Vegan cookbook.

Green plantain is fried twice, smushed down just prior to the second frying to create a thinner and extra crunchy treat. There are many methods for crushing tostones for their second frying. The idea is to use a heavy, flat object to evenly apply enough pressure to the cooked plantain to flatten it, but not so much that it falls apart. There's a special Latin kitchen tool; called a tostonera that is designed just for the smashing purpose. I used my handy-dandy poori press for that and it worked great for me.

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