With Cinco de Mayo just around the corner, it’s a great excuse to whip up a couple of latin inspired recipes and share them with you. The first is a family recipe: ‘Guacamole with Eggs’ and my own recipe: ‘Tostones (fried Plantains) topped with Shredded Chicken’.

Guacamole with Egg 

ingredients

*Yield: 3 cups

• 3 ripe Hass avocados, pitted and diced
• 4 large eggs
• 1/4 small red onion, finely diced
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1 serrano chile pepper, minced (for a less spicy taste, remove seeds)
• 1/3 cup of fresh cilantro (fresh coriander), stemmed and chopped
• 2 tbsp of mayonnaise
• salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

directions

• add the eggs to a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, turn off heat. Drain the eggs, rinse and peel under cold water and set aside.
• cut the avocados in half, remove the pits, and scoop the flesh out of their shells onto a cutting board and chop. Spoon the avocados into a bowl.
• chop the eggs and add to the guacamole mixture.
• stir in the onion, serrano chile, cilantro, mayonnaise and lemon juices up until nice and smooth.
• add salt and pepper. Taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary.
• spoon the guacamole into a serving bowl or a molcajete (mortar -shown in picture).
• Serve right away with tortilla chips or tostones (fried plantains) for dipping.

Tostones {fried Plantains} with Shredded Chicken 

Growing up, eating tostones as a side dish was a staple in our household. If you have never eaten tostones or have heard of it, it is an unripe green banana that is twice fried and flattened. Typically when served as a side dish, we simply add salt (or garlic salt) but for this recipe, I made them as festive appetizer. You can click here to get a step by step tutorial on how to make Tostones.

For the shredded chicken, you can make this a couple of ways: rinse 2 chicken breasts and pat dry. Place them in a medium to large sauce pan, cover chicken with water and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, until the chicken is tender and opaque throughtout, about 45 -minutes. Transfer the chicken onto a cutting board and shred the chicken. In a skillet, place the shredded chicken and season with your favorite fajita seasoning mix (follow the packets directions).

For a more authentic taste, the alternative is to season with Sofrito (shown in the picture). Sofrito is the base for most Puerto Rican dishes and I primarily use it to flavor my beans. We normally make batches of sofrito and freeze them since it takes a lot of ingredients and is time consuming. If you click on the link for the sofrito, you will notice that I changed the servings to 2 – since you only need a small amount to season your chicken with. Once you have followed the above cooking instructions for the chicken, heat up a skillet with 1 tbsp of olive oil, add the sofrito and salt and pepper, to taste (I used Goya Adobo seasoning) toss in your shredded chicken. Stir until for about 3 minutes on medium hight heat and remove.

Top your tostones with the chicken and layer it with your choice of shredded cheese, salsa, sour cream and/or guacamole. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!