Plantain

Earthy starch under sweet starch, with the bean carrying the salt for both.

Smashed green rounds drink garlic oil the way bread drinks it. That is the dish.

Ripe fruit fried in a fat that is already fruity; the sugar takes the colour too.

Crackling grit pounded into soft starch; the fat is the binder, not a topping.

Fried starch has no acid at all, and one wedge changes the entire plate.

Fruity capsaicin over caramelised sugar, with the starch dulling the burn.

Groundnut fat and dry starch is the West African structural pairing, not a garnish.

Lauric fat coats a dry fry; the milk turns a side dish into something spoonable.

Fried starch sugar against raw garlic acid. Nothing else cuts it as cleanly.

Fry it in this and the two lactone families read as a single fruit.

Cubed, spiced and fried, the gingerol keeps ripe sugar from cloying.

Peppery seed oil colours the fry and gives bland starch a faint earthy bitterness.

Salted fish protein and sweet starch: the Caribbean version of chips and gravy.

Fried until the edges go black; caramelised starch is the sweet counterweight to the salt.

Fried starch against sweet flesh: the plate has both or neither.

Split a ripe one, melt cheese inside; the salt turns the sugar savoury on contact.

Sweet shellfish stuffed into fried starch. Both sweet, only one of them salty.

Same cane esters as the fruit. Flame the ripe slices and it tastes like a reduction.

Starchy fruit and groundnut fat is the West African plate, minus the stew.

Roast furans over caramelised plantain; a coffee glaze on maduros reads as molasses.