Plantain Cups with Avocado and Shrimp

This Plantain Cups with Avocado and Shrimp recipe is sure to raise the flavor to the next level at your gathering with these cute bites that are exploding with great flavors.

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These Plantain Cups with Avocado and Shrimp remind me that maybe we should get a slogan, and if we do I have just the perfect one: Keeping spouses happy since 2001!

Some of our favorite comments and emails from our readers tell us how proud they were to surprise their spouse with some of our recipes. Not just wives, but husbands, too. It really does make us proud. And if you read the comments on the Spanish version of this recipe you will notice that there were a lot on the lines of: "Oh, I will surprise my husband/wife with this!".

The shortest way to our better half's heart still seems to be good food. Cooking is all about sharing our love, we enjoy watching our family enjoy the food we cook as much as we love eating it ourselves.

And if we're lucky we might hit the ultimate jackpot: to impress the mother-in-law.

So, in these days when we'll be having family coming and going, how about trying this quick and delicious dish and see if you can impress your spouse, and who knows, even gain a word of approval from your mother-in-law?

We sure love reading about those stories, so do share.

Plantain Cups with Avocado and Shrimp Recipe

Plantain Cups with Avocado and Shrimp Recipe: this cute bites are sure to raise the flavor to the next level at your gathering.

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Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Servings: 24 mofonguitos

Recipe Author: Clara Gonzalez

Ingredients

• 4 plantains (or unripe bananas)
• 1 cup oil for frying (soy, peanut or corn)
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 4 cloves of garlic , crushed into paste
• 20 jumbo shrimp , peeled
• 1 teaspoon of salt (or more, to taste)
• 1 large avocado
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1/4 teaspoon of pepper (or more, to taste)

Instructions

To make the cups

• Pre-heat oven to 200 F [100 ºC].
• Peel the bananas (or plantains). Cut into 6 slices each banana or 7 slices each plantain. Heat oil for frying over medium temperature.
• Fry each slice until they are golden brown all over. Squeeze the slices using a lemon squeezer forming small cups. Once all the cups are formed, fry them again over medium heat until all the light parts have turned golden brown.
• Turn off the oven and leave the cups in the oven while you go ahead to the next step.

For the shrimp

• Heat the olive oil over very low heat. Add the garlic and cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Do not let the garlic burn. Add the shrimp and cook until they are pink throughout. Season with salt to taste.
• Remove from the heat and reserve.

For the avocado

• Peel avocado and crush using a fork until it doesn't have any lumps. Mix in the lime juice.
• Season with salt and pepper to taste.
• To assemble
• Spoon about tablespoon of avocado mix into the cups.
• Top each with a shrimp and garnish with cilantro leaves.
• Serve immediately.

Notes

I must clarify that I did not come up with the idea of these little cups; in fact I've tried it in several restaurants, usually filled with crab meat, and on at least one occasion with avocado and onions. This particular combination, however, is of my own making.

For this recipe you can use either unripe bananas or plantains. Plantains would be the more traditional choice (they are easier to work with and yield better-looking cups), but my experiment using green bananas turned surprisingly delicious; the taste and texture are pretty different than if using plantains. The picture above is of the banana version.

If you do use plantains, skip the oven step, as plantains get dry and hard too easily.