Ecuadorian Arroz con Menestra y Carne & Plantain Cake

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Hello dear readers. Today we have a guest post from Alicia's husband, Adrian.

Bonus Recipe!! This is Adrian Maruri. The Ecuadorian food recipe month was a crazy one and we are already on the Irish month which so far has been quite tasty. My wife couldn’t post weekly about the meals in the Ecuadorian month as she likes to, so I volunteered to post the last recipe plus a very special bonus dessert: Plantain Cake! (which has got to be the most Ecuadorian desert) As always, desert is the last course so we’ll start with the last meal of the Ecuador series, the delicious “Arroz Con Menestra y Carne” (steak, rice, and lentils).

​Arroz Con Menestra y Carne

The recipe I used can be found in the great Laylita’s website where she has a wide range of Ecuadorian recipes so I’ll copy the recipe here and only comment on the things I did differently or in addition to it and any comments I may have.

Arroz con Menestra y Carne

As you can see in the picture, instead of serving this meal with sliced avocados, I like to make Guacamole to dip the fried plantain slices in. The side fried plantain for this meal is usually green and preferably so in my opinion. As a traditional occurrence when making lentil menestra, you’ll always end up with leftovers which is best to keep in the freezer and will be great later when you’re in a pinch since the lentils are great on their own, better with rice, and best with an added sunny-side up egg on top.

Plantain Cake

Now what you came for… The Plantain Cake! There’s probably not a more Ecuadorian dessert out there, at least not a proper one (some people call a fruit salad a desert which is fine but I think cake wins the “dessertiness” contest) Now, full disclosure, you don’t really use green plantains in this recipe as depicted in the thumbnail, they must be very ripe. I should add, I have never made or had this before until now so I can’t confirm whether this is the best or the worst recipe for this cake, but I really enjoyed it. I also know that the have different versions of this cake in Colombia and Venezuela but how different or in what way, I don’t know. So without further ado, here it is:

Plantain Cake

For reference, here is a link to the recipe site, although be warned, it is all in Spanish: https://cookpad.com/es/recetas/116152-torta-de-maduro-ecuatoriana

​I was so curious when I saw cheese as part of the ingredients but I have to say it added a nice contrast to the sweetness of the cake which in part makes sense because in Ecuador we eat plantain with cheese all the time, green or ripe, but a cake with cheese was new to me. The consistency was a bit more like a plantain flan than a cake, which doesn’t take from its deliciousness, I was just left wondering if a different recipe would get me vastly different results… who knows. Hope you enjoy these recipes!