Plantain and meat surprise

Wash, dry and dice the prosciutto and salt pork.

Chop the green pepper, seeded sweet chili peppers, onion and garlic; chop the prunes and pimento olives.

Melt the lard in a caldero or Dutch oven over medium heat and brown the diced prosciutto and salt pork.

Turn to low, add the chopped vegetables and saute 10 minutes.

Bring three cups of water and a teaspoon of salt to a boil, add the trimmed green beans, drop to moderate heat and boil 20 minutes.

Brown the ground beef with salt, off book, then add it to the vegetables and reduce the heat to low.

Add the chopped hard-boiled eggs, prunes, green olives, raisins, capers, oregano, salt, vinegar and tomato sauce.

Cover and cook on low for 15 minutes.

Chop the boiled green beans rather than adding them whole, and stir them in.

Peel the plantains and cut each into four lengthwise slices.

Deep fry the plantain slices in lard at 380F, about a minute per side, until browned on both sides, and drain on paper towel. Lard smokes above its smoke point of roughly 280 to 390F; 505F burned the first slice.

Beat six whole eggs to the ribbon stage and beat in three quarters of a teaspoon of salt.

Line the pan with two tablespoons of the frying lard.

Pour half the beaten egg into the pan, then a third of the plantain slices, then half the meat mixture, then another third of the plantains, then the rest of the meat, then the rest of the plantains, then the remaining beaten egg.

Cook on the stove over moderate heat for 15 minutes.

Remove from the heat, place a big platter over the pan and turn it over carefully to unmold.

Alternative in the cookbook's footnote: bake in a glass baking dish at 350 degrees for 30 minutes until the egg is set and golden brown, and serve in the dish without unmolding.

After the second flip, cook over a low heat for a further 15 minutes.

Turn out onto a serving platter.