They are delicious, sweet and many people like to turn most of the fruit they buy into juice.
There is one fruit that you can always count on finding: plantains. They are green, unripened bananas that are used in many Dominican dishes like mangú, tostones, yaroa, pastelón, sancocho, mofongo, pastel en hoja and sopa de mondongo.
Back in February, I had the privilege of visiting a banana farm in Monte Cristi! We learned a lot about how bananas are grown and harvested through mass production. Did you know that banana trees require a lot of water to grow? Farmers have to flood banana farms periodically for the trees to absorb the water they need. Once a banana tree gives fruit, it does not last much longer to give fruit of the same quality again. By the time a banana tree has bloomed, there is usually a baby banana tree growing close by. To help the baby tree, farmers cut off the part of the grown banana tree that produces fruit and leave the rest to continue giving water to the baby tree.
During our tour of the farm, we were curious about how much water the trunk of the banana tree held; so the tour guide started squeezing and twisting the trunk like a sponge! When harvesting the banana trees, they place a branch of bananas on a zipline type contraption to move it to be cleaned and pulled apart. Then, the bananas are loaded onto a truck to be exported to other countries. A small percentage is kept in the country, particularly the least perfect ones or ones that are not quite as ripe.
I asked the fourth graders at my school what their favorite Dominican dishes were and they said: Mangú.
