In most of the Caribbean a patacón is a small, crunchy coin of fried green plantain. In Maracaibo, the hot, proud oil city on the lake in Zulia state, someone looked at that coin and thought much bigger. The patacón maracucho uses a whole green plantain split lengthways, fried, smashed flat into a wide, thin sheet and fried again, then uses two of those sheets as the bread for an enormous sandwich. Inside go shredded meat, ham, cheese, lettuce, tomato and an arsenal of sauces.

It is street food, sold late into the evening from stalls across the city, and Maracuchos treat it with the seriousness other cities reserve for their football clubs. Ours fills it with quickly seasoned shredded chicken, which uses a store bought roast chicken, so the only real work is the plantain. It is excellent for a night race, which is when Maracaibo eats it too.

Garlic sauce

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (115 g) mayonnaise
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 teaspoon lime juice

The shredded chicken

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon (15 ml) vegetable oil
• 1/2 yellow onion
• 1/2 red bell pepper
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 3 cups (about 400 g) shredded cooked chicken
• 1/3 cup (80 ml) water or chicken stock
• to taste fine salt

The plantain sheets

Ingredients

• 4 large green plantains
• about 2 cups (480 ml) vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon fine salt

Building the patacón

Ingredients

• 8 slices cooked ham
• 8 slices queso de mano or mozzarella
• 2 cups shredded iceberg lettuce
• 2 ripe tomatoes
• 4 tablespoons ketchup
• 2 tablespoons yellow mustard

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