Tostones: Quick & Delicious

A place we go to for lunch near work makes these, and I wanted to try making 'em at home. Ridiculously easy:

Buy some plantains. Green or very slightly yellow. Cut a slit down the side of the whole thing to make them easy to peel. Chop into 1" chunks, and peel each. Heat up about 1/2" of oil (we used peanut) to ~350 degrees. Put chopped plantain chunks into oil, so the oil comes halfway-ish up the side of the pieces. Flip 'em over when lightly browned to do the other side. When all browned, take the pieces out of the oil and drain.

Smash each piece (gently, I suppose) with the bottom of a pan 'till ~1/4" thick. Some recipes say to toss into cold salted water, but I didn't do that. Start simmering some olive oil with a couple cloves of smashed and minced garlic over low heat, and let this go until you're done frying the plantains.

Get the oil back up to "hot" (350-375), and fry each of the discs (I did 2 at a time) until crisp at the edges. Couple minutes each. Drain on paper towels, salt while hot. Drizzle the garlic oil and garlic over the thing, and eat while hot, crispy, sweet, chewy, and garlicky.

Relatively quick, probably nothing even remotely like healthy, but totally delicious.