At first I didn´t get it, but the key to the situation is that green plantains are used for each of these dishes. Green plantains are actually green (at least their peel is), and they are also "green" in the sense that they are not fully mature. The fruit can be used to make a "maza" (dough), and rolled into the shell of an empanada, into a tortilla, into a ball, or into a football shaped roll. It is also popularly stamped into round disks ("patacones"), and I am sure it could be made into countless other things!
The other color spectrum plantain, is the "maduro", literally "mature", which are ripened, yellow, plantains that are often served fried, sweet... and delicious! Pictured above are both a "platano verde," and a "maduro."I have told some of the groups that visit Ecuador that it is possible to have five starches in one meal: green plantain, yucca, pasta, rice and ... potatoes. For a traditional "almuerzo", which is a set lunch including soup, juice, traditional plate (meat, rice and "salad"), and dessert, it is possible to have: potato and pasta in the soup, rice and potatos on the main plate, and a yucca dessert! Often, if you are served pasta, .... you will also be served a portion of rice!
Yucca here is not the same as the state flower of New Mexico. It is a tuber, (a specialized root with nodes from which roots and shoots grow) similar to a potato. I find its more fibrous texture great in soup;-).
Here are Gail and Dylis of of Ron and Gloria´s team peeling yucca:
Ecuadorian food can be LABOR-INTENSIVE! Below Peter, Brad, Brad and Jillian, members of Lisa and Amanda´s Global Village team, grate yucca.. 
.and Brad and reinforcements CONTINUE to grate yucca... 
The yucca was used to make a yucca dessert, and "muchines", which are football-shaped rolls of yucca dough and butter, filled with cheese and fried. Here, David and Tamia mash the cooked yucca into a mashed-potato consistency. 
Next the yucca mash is shaped into the "muchines", pictured here, Brenda and Gail of the Greenwald team are learning from Rosalio, the restaurant owner and cook, how to form the yucca football.
Tracy and Stacy from Lisa and Amanda´s team below have successfully formed a pan full of "muchines." 
1 comment:
I love Yucca - aka Cassava root!!! Especially fried Yucca from Crisp and Juicy in Arlington, VA - oh - and thos yummy plantains!
how I wish I was in Ecuador getting the hands-on experience!
keep writing cuz - this is great!
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