“I eat my candy with pork and beans.
Excuse my manners if I make a scene.”
-Pork and Beans, by Weezer

I could begin this post with a rose-tinted anecdote about how, during the run-up to our wedding in Italy, as Amy and I were lingering romantically over a typically rustic Tuscan dinner one warm June evening against the background of a bucolic, rolling landscape with honey-colored buildings dotted sparingly among neat rows of vines and olives — our eyes locked together over a tablescape of starched cloth, antique silver and leaded crystal — the air, heavy with the scent of lavender and the hum of cicadas, seemed to stir momentarily, as if a gust of breeze from we knew not where had suddenly, and unintentionally, loosed itself, darkening our moods and furrowing our brows with its unwelcome interruption.

I could conclude such an anecdote in lyrical fashion thus: as the sun’s dipping parabola cast its final, limpid rays upon the radiant skin of my betrothed’s temples, she recoiled in anguish, reeling like a punch-drunk prize-fighter, at the rancid bouquet now squalling through her nostrils.

I could also proceed with a lengthy explanation of why it is that fagioli e salsiccie is the quintessential Tuscan peasant dish, having sustained generations in that part of Italy, and how it sits proudly among the best of pan-European cucina povera alongside fabada and ollo podrida.

Instead, I could just as easily explain that during said nuptials we enjoyed many of the delicious bean dishes for which Tuscany is famous and, consequently, experienced the oh-so familiar sensation of, ahem, flatulence.

These days many people are aware of the wonders of Tuscan cuisine; the saltless bread, the magnificent steaks, the peppery, fruity olive oil, the tangy Pecorino, the bread and tomato soups, as well as the widespread use of beans that has earned Tuscans the moniker “mangiafagioli” or bean-eaters. What still mystifies most people though, is if beans always give us wretched and disgusting gas, why do we continue eating them?

Before you start clicking away, tut-tutting about the sheer childishness… the puerile subject matter… they should know better, etc., you might consider the anthropological significance of the humble bean. Not only are beans among the world’s super foods, being packed with protein (containing more than twice the protein of most meats), fiber, and complex carbohydrates, the simple act of growing them fixes nitrogen to poor soils enabling land to remain fertile without requiring artificial fertilizers (meaning they are not just good for you, they are also good the Earth), but, in addition to being nutritionally complete, beans are easy to grow, and, as a result, have been (pun intended) essential to human societies since way before bread was even conceived of. Thus, the histories of the bean, the fart, and the very survival of humanity are inextricably connected.

Not that our survival this past weekend was predicated on eating beans, but as we struggled back up to our fourth floor walk-up apartment wet and cold from chilly April showers, it certainly felt that way for a few moments. The idea of the silken texture of perfectly cooked cannellini beans bathed lovingly in a tomato, garlic and bay-scented broth, and complemented by fennel or hot pepper-spiked pork sausage hung like an apparition in front of us as we stuffed our shoes with newspaper and festooned every available hanging place with damp clothes.

Sadly, we hadn’t had the foresight to soak our dried beans overnight (we only had four hours to soak them), so we tried the oft-mooted, but untested, option of using the pressure cooker to make amends. Various online sources suggested pressure-cooking them for anything between 12 and 25 minutes, neither of which we found to be nearly enough. After three abortive de-pressurizations, and a total of around 40 minutes cooking, the beans had achieved the smooth, toothsome texture we were looking for. Having browned the sausages in the pot before adding the beans, onion, garlic, bay, vegetable stock and tomato paste, all they required was an additional five minutes simmering among the beans for the dish to be ready.

Settling into our meal, we were astounded by the restorative qualities of simple pork and beans, washing the warming combo down with something red and Portuguese and in the $8 range. The following morning, we were similarly astounded by the metabolic reaction of human intestines and beans. Happily, our marriage, having begun with flatulence, and now securely founded on a mutual understanding of the universality of these kinds of things, was able to accommodate such seismic eruptions. Our day proceeded with a long walk in the park, having left our apartment, windows open, to air out.

Before we head off to England (and a five day side-trip to Northern France) to visit the across-the-pond family, we wanted to leave you with a different option for your Christmas Day meal.  Some families love making hard-core meals for Christmas Day dinner – meals that take hours to cook and include many courses or many side dishes.  If that is your type of meal, then you may want to save this recipe for another time (perhaps when you’re hung over on New Year’s Day?).   This dish is so flavorful and so freaking easy to make.  You know what makes it even better? It’s a cost-effective.  So chat with your butcher, make it easier and just ask him/her to butterfly that pork for you, grab a huge mug of egg nog or mulled wine, throw on some Johnny Mathis and spend some time doing what real Americans will be doing – hanging out with Ralphie.

MERRY CHRISTMAS/HAPPY HANUKKAH/HAPPY KWANZAA EVERYONE! Thank you for supporting us, commenting on posts and actually reading our words.  It means more than you know!  Have a delicious 2010!

At Via Clavature 18, hidden in the back streets of Bologna, is the comparatively charmless little Ristorante da Gianni. It’s dimly lit, almost to the point of stumbling darkness — especially if you enter, as we did, from the sharp rays of a late midsummers’ afternoon nursing a fierce hangover brought on by a handful of Negronis the night before — and is made even darker by heavy wood paneling on all sides and rather gruff service. However, it is famous among local gastronomes for its strictly traditional Bolognese fare, and as most food-obsessed people know intuitively, what they serve in such seemingly unlikely-looking places often more than makes up for what is lacking in atmosphere. So it was here.

I’ve rhapsodized previously about the wonder that was the deep-fried lamb chops I first ate there, and my wife has written extensively about both the outstanding ragu alla Bolognese and the equally scrumptious sausage ragu we tore through as our respective primi piatti that day, but (as part of a gargantuan meal that also included a giant-felling plate of bollito misto) these courses were preceded by a dish of such cunning, such laughter-inducing simplicity, that I have been wanting to make it ever since — just to see if it would tickle me in the same way again. Not only that, but it may also have been among the most effective hangover cures I have ever tried, for following it, I was able to play a more than active role in emptying three bottles of Barolo. So just what was this jovial and miraculous dish, you ask? Spuma di Mortadella sauced sparingly with the sweetest, honeyed, aged-balsamic vinegar I’ve ever had the privilege to taste.

“Ugh! Baloney foam! Why would you begin such a meal with that crap?”, I hear you cry. Well, you’re half-right. Spuma di mortadella is, in fact, nothing more than whipped “Bologna ham”, but it is also, simultaneously, so, so, so much more. Unfortunately, many Americans only know baloney/Bologna as the ubiquitous bright pink sandwich meat that has cursed many a child’s school lunch with its weird, cloying, yet plasticky, texture, and flavor somewhere between hairspray and old socks. But, as with many mass-produced things — from shoes to IKEA furniture — the handmade versions are not only completely different, they’re way better.

Mortadella, known as Bologna in the US because it was originally made only in the immediate vicinity of the city, is an ancient kind of emulsified (forcemeat) sausage that gets its name from the mortar (mortaio) and pestle that was used once-upon-a-time to grind up the pork and spices during preparation. Incorporating at least 15% pork fat — specifically the firm, white neck fat of the pig, and often as large cubes rather than ground up with the pork — mortadella can be flavored with a variety of things including, myrtle berries, black or white peppercorns, nutmeg, coriander, olives and pistachios. It is then cooked gently for as long as 24 hours, depending on the size of the mortadella (some weigh up to 100kilos/220lbs), in air-drying ovens, before being sprayed with cold water and allowed to stabilize in a cooling room.

In Emilia-Romagna, mortadella is often served as part of a salumi, or charcuterie, plate with a selection of the region’s staggeringly delicious cured pork products like, culatello di Zibello, coppa Piacentino, prosciutto di Parma, spalla cotta, zampone (at Christmas), or cappello di prete (a pinky-white forcemeat “sausage” that looks like a priest’s tri-cornered hat), but it can be used to make a wide variety of delectable treats, including spuma di mortadella.

The translation of spuma di mortadella to “mortadella foam” is unfortunate, and somewhat hyperbolic, because while the sausage is whipped and feels light on the tongue, it neither resembles foam in texture, nor sits like air on the stomach. Nonetheless, its simplicity is its brilliance: we simply combined first-rate mortadella (with the lumps of hard fat) with nutmeg and cream and whipped it into a light pink emulsion garnishing with pistachios and a drizzle of excellent balsamic vinegar (in our case, a 30 year old we had bought from a man with a very dubious hair-piece).

However, spuma di mortadella isn’t a one trick pony, quite the opposite. It also makes a fabulously rich filling for a stuffed pasta – which we sauced with garlic-infused butter. And, in a glorious return, tearing up its debased American bag-lunch roots, it is a kick-ass sandwich filling that would be the envy of any child in the playground. It’s even better when used as a topping for a montadito (small, open-faced sandwich, like a crostini or bruschetta) and mounted a cheval, with a poached egg.

We encourage you to give this one a try, even if you have remedial issues from being teased about your baloney-breath by the cool kids, because spuma di mortadella can make even the biggest nerd cool.

Ristorante da Gianni (A La Vecia Bulagna)
Via Clavature 18, Bologna, 40124 IT
T: 051-229434
Dinner €20-30 per person

Virtually everywhere they make sausages, and in a lot of places they don’t, some form of sausage in bread combination is sold by street vendors, often to the inebriated, and, in many cases, the consumer is best advised to be under the influence before taking their life in their hands with one of these mystery bag sandwiches. The night I met my wife, for example, I remember being horrified that her sister (who had introduced us earlier in the evening) was reckless enough — even after 50 drinks — to buy an insanitary-looking sausage in a roll from a street vendor in London’s Piccadilly Circus.

Where sanitation isn’t the biggest issue, a sense of disappointment often is, with the boring and insipid offerings available at any of the myriad hot dog stands lining almost every Manhattan street exemplifying this. Do not get me wrong, a New York hot dog — pulled from the disquietingly opaque water, slapped into a curiously spongy potato roll, and painted with mustard and an unidentifiable relish – is certainly a real taste of NYC street life, and when you’ve been pounding the city streets for an afternoon, almost enjoyable, but it is not great street food, regardless of what Adam Platt at NYMag says. (feel free to post your own disagreements with me below)

However, the more I travel, the more I realize that these sausage and bread combos can actually be both safe for human consumption and, in some cases, a delicacy. You may remember our merguez frites sandwich of last year, which was not just the best street food we’d ever had, but right up there with the finest sandwiches too. Even the overtly filthy nature of that vendor in Carcassonne failed to put us off. Indeed, it’s probably true that we would risk a searing bout of intestinal drainage on a weekly basis if only merguez frites were readily available.

So, during our recent trip to Argentina we were intrigued by rusty little cabins that we passed throughout Buenos Aires, either parked-up or slumping shack-ily on the sidewalk, emitting wonderfully aromatic smoke and advertizing choripán and morcipán on gaily painted signs. After one particularly lengthy trek across the city from Palermo to Recoleta to the edge of Balvanera, we were ravenous and mentally-prepared for something of questionable hygiene wrapped in a roll and doused with condiments.

Following a tip we had picked up online, we headed to the corner of Avenida Juan B. Justo and Avenida Santa Fe in Palermo [right next to the Palermo Subte stop (D line)], to a very sweaty looking snack bar for a pre-dinner choripán — a chori(zo) on bread (pan). Smaller than our pitifully-sized Brooklyn apartment and decorated with aging posters of scantily-clad beer models, our senses immediately told us that this cafe was exactly the kind of place that would deliver the equal measures of delicious, greasy victuals and stinging doses of the raging squitters we were looking for. [Happily, only the former arrived.]

Your typical sausage and roll combination features a roll that follows the dimensions of the sausage: long and narrow. However, one of the many things I immediately liked about choripáns and morcipáns is that they invert this absolutist relationship on its head. The sausage is split down the center, seared on both “faces” a la plancha and, dripping with bright orange fat, is placed inside a rectangular hunk of French-style bread. Not only is it texturally superior to its flimsy American counterpart, but its increased surface area and the greater density of the bread, make it a far better designed sandwich than the hot dog. As, enclosed in a larger roll, your choice of condiments — in this case, mayonnaise, “golf sauce” (not unlike Russian/Thousand Island dressing), ketchup, mustard, and chimichurri — are less able to escape and damage shirt or shoes, as frequently happens when biting down on the open-topped frankfurter.

Unfortunately, once you go choripán, you can never go back, and their absence from my everyday street food scene has become a source of extreme frustration now that I’m back in New York. Passing-by vendors of the humble hot dog several times a day, I can’t help sneer a little at their meagre offerings of limp weiner and rubbery potato roll, and I mutter to myself that the magnificent, spicy, chewy choripán is a shining light compared to their ghostly reflections.

Happily, choripáns and morcipáns are easy and fun to make in the comfort of your own home and make a great alternative to the unimaginative backyard barbecue staples of weiners and burgers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we couldn’t find Argentine-style chorizo in Brooklyn, but the easy to find, and similarly fresh and soft Colombian and Mexican varieties make worthy replacements, even if they are longer and slimmer than their Argentina counterparts. This past weekend, humming “the choripán man, the choripán man’s really got it going on…” inanely to ourselves, we mixed-up a tangy chimichurri, grilled ourselves some chorizo, and enjoyed a taste of Buenos Aires with a cold beer, even if we had to imagine the warm weather and palm trees.

As Odysseus was nearly drawn to his destruction on the rocks by the enchanting song of the sirens, so your hardy WANF voyagers were almost powerless to resist breaking themselves on the plentiful tables of Uruguay. However, unlike Homer’s hero, for whom women were the main weakness throughout his epic peregrinations, during our recent travels in South America, we found that grilled organs, specifically sweetbreads, are the likely source of our eventual ruin.

A comparatively short (by Odysseian standards) three-hour Buquebus ferry ride from Buenos Aires across the Mar del Plata – the enormously wide and constantly brown estuary of the Rio de la Plata (River Plate) – lies Uruguay’s capital and largest city, Montevideo. Arriving by water feels delightfully old-fashioned, and it allows the visitor to get a sense of the lie of the land in a way that a plane ride cannot. Rather than the confusing meander through a city’s outskirts on the way in from the airport, the city slowly revealed itself to us as we approached it by sea, face-first, so that we could see the way it had been built, outwards from the port.

Centered on the port is Montevideo’s cuidad vieja (old town), which with its faded colonial glory and salty night-time reputation, is immediately charming to the visitor. Only the giant ultra-modern cruise ship towering over everything prevented us from wondering if the ferry hadn’t also been a time machine. The hub of the old town is the Mercado del Puerto, a magnificent Victorian-era market with a skylit roof supported by wrought iron pillars, where the air is thick with the thwack of cleaver on meat, the cries of competing vendors and the sooty warblings of its resident pigeons. It no longer serves as a venue for trading fresh produce, a fact that might be sad if it weren’t now a giant parilla (grill/barbecue) serving all manner of traditional Uruguayan meaty preparations.

More accurately, there are actually a bunch of different parillas within the mercado all in friendly and typically laid-back Uruguayan-style competition with one another for the title of best in the city. We spent a good fifteen minutes cagily circling the mercado trying to figure out some way of discerning which might be leading this contest. After inspecting rack upon similar rack of sizzling meats, we decided to let demographics be our guide and plumped for Estancia del Puerto, the place with the fewest available seats (2), and the most drunken dudes with guitars serenading the patrons (1).

We had left Buenos Aires on a very early morning ferry and, having eaten nothing on the journey, arrived in Montevideo in a terrible, bleary-eyed state of hunger. The only way out of which seemed to be robust servings of charred beast. Happily then, the menu was the most extensive of its kind we have ever seen, containing more than eight choices of steak, five of sausage, 3 or 4 matambres (stuffed beef rolls), chicken, pork, and an intimidating selection of organ meats, not to mention a full range of pasta, salads and sides, in both full or half portions. Understanding, by this point in our carnivorous odyssey, that servings tended to be of a generous nature in this part of the world, we ordered half portions of mollejones (sweetbreads), morcilla (blood sausage), lechon (suckling pig), the potentially gruesome chotos/chinchulines (guts), and a bottle of typically Uruguayan tannat (red wine), in the hope that this might save room for further sampling of the menu.

Since, like all good grills, only certain sections of this parilla were used to actually cook meat, with others functioning as warming areas for ready-to-serve meats, we were presented with our choices within seconds, and what a presentation! No garnish, no sides of vegetables, no wasted real estate at all, just meat on plates and silverware wrapped in a paper napkin, with deep, communal tubs of chimichurri and salsa criolla scattered around the bar. We dived in recklessly.

The star of the show was the lechon, or milk-fed baby pig, which was heavenly. So good in fact, that were it not for the perfectly crispy skin overlying a thin-layer of incredibly sweet fat, and the moist, almost milky-tasting, flesh of unweaned piglet, it would truly be a barbaric dish. But our pause for reflection on the plight of young pork was brief as we tore into the golden beauty of the sweetbreads, the complex spices of the morcilla, and the (surprisingly) wonderful crunchy texture and minerally-tasting joy of the chinchulines. It all tasted to us like no meat had before, even the condiments had a singular tang and freshness to them that we found a step-up from those we’d had earlier in the week. And it seems we were not alone in this.

Glancing up at our surroundings and fellow diners as we approached fullness, it was comforting to see that everyone else was head-down and going full-bore into their lunches too. And who could blame them? Like the irresistible song of the sirens, the evocative combination of wood-smokey atmosphere, beautiful Victorian architecture, and the surround-sound effect of wall-to-wall sizzling would surely stir the soul of any meat-lover and be ruinous to the anti-meat resolve of even the most hardcore vegetarian.

Mercado del Puerto
Rambla 25 Agosto de 1825 y Perez Castellano,
Ciudad Vieja, Montevideo, Uruguay
Mercado del Puerto online

After that kick-a$$ cheesecake we devoured I figured that free pasta would pale in comparison.  Boy was I wrong.  As most of you know, we prefer savory food over sweets and I’d take a big, steaming bowl of perfectly al dente pasta over a cheesecake any day.  I’m serious here.  Garofalo’s pappardelle from their “signature line” did the trick. We paired this fabulously tasty pasta with a hearty Sausage Ragu and it held up while adding that perfect chew to the dish.

I know I go on and on (and on) about how important perfectly al dente pasta is to me, but I can’t imagine wasting a fabulous sauce on a crappy, soggy bit of pasta.  Too often if you follow the instructions on the back of a box of pasta you’ll be left with it way overcooked.  My rule of thumb is to always subtract two minutes from the given instructions and usually I get the perfect chew.  This time I decided to test Garofalo’s (hey, it was free) to see if their instructions were bang-on. 8 minutes is what it said and 8 minutes was all it needed.  Maybe they got it right because this pasta is actually made in Italy, “near the ruins of Pompeii”.  It actually tastes like it is made in Italy.  The other thing I love about Garofalo pasta is that they offer “different” pasta shapes besides the obvious penne, spaghetti and linguine.  Some of these specialty cuts include schiaffoni (large oval-shaped noodle) and calamarata (like thick-cut calamari rings).  These are the types of shapes I want to eat when I’m bored of the norm.

No lie – I highly recommend this pasta, especially along with our deliciously hearty sausage ragu.  In fact, I’m writing the rep from the company to ask where I can get some in Brooklyn.  I have a feeling I’ll have to harass the manager at my local grocery store to order some, but it will be worth it.

PAPPARDELLE WITH SAUSAGE AND PEA RAGU (serves 4)

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. pappardelle (dried or homemade)
• 1 lb. ground sausage meat (or sausage links taken out of the casings)
• 1 onion, finely diced
• 3 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 1 teaspoon fennel seed, crushed
• 1 28-oz. can of crushed tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
• 1 cup of red wine
• 1 cup of peas (I used frozen)
• basil
• salt and pepper

What to do:

1. Saute your onions and garlic in some olive oil for a few minutes to get some color on them.  Add the sausage meat and break up with a wooden spoon.  Allow to brown for 2 to 3 minutes and then add the fennel seed and stir.
2. Add in the red wine and stir into the meat.  Allow to cook down for a minute.  Add the whole can of tomatoes.  Let this cook on medium-low and stir.  It will cook for about 20-30 minutes until all the flavors come together.
3. While the ragu comes together, boil some salted water.  About ten minutes before you’re ready to eat, boil your pasta till al dente and add directly into the ragu along with a 1/4 ladel-full of pasta water. Add peas.  Cook for 30 seconds, toss in some basil and plate.  Serve with parmigiano reggiano. Enjoy!

Anyone who takes even the briefest glance at our body of work on this blog cannot fail to notice that we have a definite proclivity towards the porcine, and so it is that this top five is perhaps the most hotly contested monthly selection thus far.

The pig is, in our humble opinion, the greatest animal on earth, and picking only five products made from its wondrous bounty was a difficult thing. Beatific smiles spread across our faces as we considered our porky love and suggested different products and cuts of the beast, but, after much debate, a surprising consensus form between us, with only two points of disagreement.

Let us know what your favorite pork products are and win a package of pork-related kitchen goodies.

Amy & Jonny’s Top Five Pork Products:
1. guanciale (cured pig’s jowls) - Jonny: switch out for Spanish cured lomo
2. chorizo (pimenton flavored cured sausage)
3. jamon iberico (special Spanish ham)
4. chicharrones (fried pork rinds)
5. scrapple (a Philadelphia tradition made with lots of bits of pig and cornmeal) - Jonny: switch out for unsmoked English back bacon rashers

What’s originally from India, can be green or yellow, starchy or sweet, is consumed throughout West Africa, the Caribbean, and Central & South America, and (best of all) can be used to mimic a phallus in hilarious kitchen antics? Yes, that’s right, it’s the plantain – aka banana plantain, cooking plantain, beer banana, bocadillo plantain, tostones, maduro, patacon, chifle, dodo, etc. – and like almost all the best kinds of foods (to us at least) it is most deliciously prepared deep-fried.

Throughout the Caribbean, Central America and the northern half of South America, starchy green plantains, aka patacones or tostones, are one of the principal components of almost every meal, and, depending on where you are and who is doing the cooking, you’ll find them sliced into rounds (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic), cut on the bias to make wedges (Honduras, Cuba), or sliced length-wise into, well, long, um, sausages (Venezuela, Colombia, Jamaica, Trinidad)…Typically, the plantain is fried once before being lightly flattened (in some places this is done with a special tool, but we used a meat mallet or rolling pin to good effect) which gives more surface area, exposing more of the starch to oil, and hence creating crispier patacones/tostones. Then, it’s tipped back into the fryer and cooked until crispy and golden on all sides.

In many places, nothing more is done to it and it’s eaten just like that, maybe with some salt or sliced avocado. In Haiti, Dominican Republic and Cuba they are often dipped in criole/creole/criollo sauce and eaten with chicken or shrimp, whereas in Venezuela and Colombia they often go into sandwiches with meat and vegetables. Let’s face it though, they’re good anyway you like them. They’re like potato chips on steroids and will fill even the hungriest belly in double-time.

After eating them prepared in a similar way at a restaurant near us in Brooklyn, we spread our patacones with mashed avocado, but then gilded that lily adding sauteed onions, our world (ie: home) famous black beans, crumbled morcilla (blood sausage) and chunks of chorizo. A little squeeze of sour cream and hot sauce finished things off. If you can’t find, or won’t eat morcilla, it would still be delicious with just chorizo, but we can imagine topping patacones with shredded chicken, roast pork, shrimp, fish, or anything you like really. Half a green plantain each made a decent “light” dinner, but these would make fantastic finger-food at a party if you cut them into bite-sized pieces. Viva el patacon!

In honor or one of our commenters (Elra), we thought it would be helpful to actually post a recipe instead of posting an idea of how to make this. So, here ya go:

PATACONES (serves 2 as a meal and 4 as an appetizer)

Ingredients:

• 2 green plantains 
• enough peanut or veggie oil to fry
• lime
• salt

Optional toppings:

• Our “famous” black beans
• Smashed avocado with a bit of lime or homemade guacamole (avocado, lime juice, cilantro, bit of garlic)
• Sauteed onions and green peppers (saute some sliced onions and green peppers in some olive oil w/ a bit of lime juice and salt for about 8 minutes until semi-soft)
• Sauteed chorizo and/or morcilla sausage (again, slice chorizo into small pieces and crumble morcilla into similar small pieces, then saute in until warm and a bit charred – about 6-8 minutes)

What to do:

1. With a sharp knife, slice the plantain skin lengthways downwards about 1/2 inch deep.  Do not puncture the plantains, you only want to make it easier to remove the skin.  Remove skin.
2. Slice the plantian in half lengthways (from top to bottom).  Heat up oil. Fry each half of plantian for about 1-2 minutes then remove to drain on a paper towel.  Let cool for a moment.
3. Grab your mallet or tostonera, flatten the plantain as best you can until it is about 1/4 of an inch thick.  We basically just smashed ours with a mallet, but be kind of careful not to hit too hard because you don’t want it to split. Once they are all flattened, fry again until golden brown, the time will be determined by how hot your oil is.
4. Remove from oil and allow to drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with some salt and a squeeze of lime juice and top with your favorite toppings!