My sister and I share everything: clothes, an apartment. Last year we even shared a bad case of the flu. We’d lost our appetites, until Mom showed up with all the ingredients for her vegetarian plantain ball soup. If anything could make us feel better, it was Mom’s aromatic soup. Sure enough, this recipe from our home country of Ecuador helped us say adios to a nasty virus.
Ingredients
4 plantains
6 cabbage leaves
1 cup frozen mixed vegetables (peas, carrots, green beans and corn)
2 eggs, hard boiled
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 scallion, chopped
2 tablespoons butter, soft
1 cup milk
salt
pepper
Goya’s sazon coriander/annatto
cilantro
Preparation
1. In a half gallon of water, boil 2 peeled plantains with garlic and scallions for 15 minutes.
2. Remove plantains from the broth (but don’t discard) and mash well. Let broth simmer.
3. Grate the 2 raw plantains and mix with the plantain mash and butter to form a “dough.”
4. Cook frozen vegetables. Chop eggs and combine with vegetables.
5. Make plantain dough balls, with the vegetable/egg mix inside.
6. Drop cabbage into broth and simmer 10 minutes.
7. Gently drop the plantain balls into broth and simmer 10 minutes more.
8. Add milk, and salt, pepper, Goya powder and cilantro to taste.
Serves 4.
