The Maltese Bacon’s friend Brian went to the grocery store in Williamsburg last Saturday and sent this e-mail shortly afterward:

Hello --

Just went crazy with groceries. Wanna come over for dinner today or
breakfast tomorrow?

Have the following:

eggs
dominican salami
dominican frying cheese
1 plantano
1 maduro
corn tortillas
black beans
short-grained white rice
spanish onions
limes
smoked herring
2 sm red potatoes 2 sm beets
2 shallots
dandelion greens
pretty dry rosemary
bok choy
crimini mushrooms
weird little baby sweet peppers
nothing to drink

TMB loves this because it is a big sucker for lists. A meeting is arranged for noontime breakfast the next day. Brian was in charge of the cheese, eggs, salami and merguez sausage. He fried the cheese in lard. Delicious! There wasn’t any kind of lard film on the cheese, so one wouldn’t really know from whence it had come, and therefore able to enjoy it in good conscience. 

TMB was in charge of the plantains, which were boiled, mixed with some onions, garlic, small sweet peppers and butter. Katie, Brian’s sister, had fun forming them into cakes. Then TMB pan fried them and stuck a fried egg on top, like a plantain eggs benedict. Having both the sweet yellow plantain and the green plantain in the patty made it only slightly sweet, a good, starchy foil for the savory of all the other things on the plate.

After eating, the group decided to take a walk, before falling into food induced REM. Everyone walked around the Hasidic neighborhood of Williamsburg. Brian picked up a bag of very good rugelach at a bakery. The group then snooped around a deli that had an extensive pickle bar and wandered around a toy store that sold small plastic figurines of Hasidic children. There also was a confederate soldier kid’s costume for sale – disturbing and totally weird.

Plantain Cakes
 1 green plantain
1 yellow plantain
1 clove of garlic
½ small onion
½ red bell pepper or equivalent other sweet peppers
butter
olive oil
salt/pepper
½ chopped jalapeño (no seeds)

Chop one green and one yellow plantain into 2 inch pieces with skin on. Peel off skin. Boil the green plantain for 5 minutes, then drop in the yellow plantain into the water. Boil for 15 minutes more. While this is boiling, sauté the red pepper, jalapeño, garlic and half a small onion in butter until onions just turn translucent. Strain the plantains and mash with a potato masher. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add garlic/onion/butter mixture and mix well. Shape the plantains into the size of discs with diameter of 3-4 inches and height of ¾ inch (more or less). It should look vaguely like a hamburger patty. Pan fry the cakes in olive oil on medium heat, until they brown on each side. Serve with a sunny side egg on top.