The "Make Mine A Mofongo" Story

The Mi Casita Restaurant in San Juan.

It was an ordinary day.  Examining the Mofongo that my wife Carol and our friend Just Sue have sitting in front of them.  Our first evening in San Juan, Puerto Rico and we decided to walk the neighborhood around our hotel to see what we could find that might be authentic Peurto Rican food.  Found this little restaurant called Mi Casita on a strip mall across the street from the Intercontinental Hotel where we are staying for ten days.  

Menu showing the varieties of Mofongo.
Click to enlarge.

Carol and Just Sue made their selection of Mofongo from the eight types that are offered on the restaurant's menu.  Guess I should give you an idea of what Mofongo really is:  Mofongo is an Afro-Puerto Rican fried plantain-based dish that is typically made with fried green plantains mashed together with a wooden mortar and pestle with broth, garlic, olive oil, and pork cracklings or bits of bacon.  It can be filled with vegetables, chicken, crab, shrimp, or beef and is often served with fried meat and chicken broth soup.  The meal has it roots in the west African Fufu which is made from various starchy vegetables and was introduced to the Caribbean by Africans in the Spanish New World colonies such as Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.  

Carol's Mofongo with pork.

The varieties offered on the menu at the Mi Casita were Mofongo: with fried pork meat, stuffed with beefsteak, stuffed with chicken, stuffed with red snapper, stuffed with shrimps, stuffed with octopus, stuffed with conch or stuffed with lobster.  Carol selected the Mofongo with fried pork meat while Just Sue selected the Mofongo stuffed with beefsteak.  As you can see from the photos, the meal comes with a mound of Mofongo that more than likely was stuffed with these meats, but also had some of the meat surrounding the mound of plantains.  

Just Sue's Mofongo with beef.

Carol reported that it tasted like Stove-Top Stuffing while Sue wasn't sure exactly what to compare it to.  As for Just Sue's husband Jerry, he chose the Octopus Salad and I was a bit more conservative with my Lasagna which I must admit was some of the best I have ever eaten.  The wait-staff was fantastic and stopped often to check on us and talk about the many varieties of Puerto Rican food they serve in their restaurant.  We did make two more stops at the restaurant, but no one chose the Mofongo again.  To me it looked like a pile of mush and didn't look very appetizing.  Lucky for me that I didn't order it on the first evening.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.The "Make