I am Nigerian American. This dish for me is very much what you call comfort food. When growing up my mother and my older sister and aunts and grandparents always eat plantains - always a side dish, always a part of some dish. Whether its eggs in the mornings with plantains or okra soup in the afternoon with plantains or goat pepper soup at night with plantains that’s often what we have as part of our meals. My father came to the U.S. first to go to Yale and my mom studied in London and came to New York after he finished to marry him. So the five of us were all born in New York, but we grew up with a lot of Igbo-Nigerian dishes. One thing I think is very important that we talked about is how women in our lives care for us. So I have just come from having our third child, and there’s something called the Omugwo its in Igbo. It’s a time where the woman who has given birth, that person’s mother takes care of them and really takes care of the family so that the husband and the wife can reconnect and bring peace and order back into the family. So for our first child my mother was here for a month cooking everyday and I would smell plantains everyday. So it was a sign that she was present and caring for us. For our second child she was there for two weeks. And the third child she was like, ‘I’m thinking of leaving after a week.’ And I’m like, ‘Please don’t! God don’t go, my goodness!’ So I hope you all enjoy. And this is going to be really sweet, which is how I love them. The riper plantain the sweeter they are.