I love chifles! There are dishes that use ripe plantains, but most the popular dishes use green, unripe plantains.
My favorite Ecuadorian breakfast is tigrillo. This is a combination of mashed green plantains, onions, spices, egg, and, typically, some chopped up pork or chicharrónes (pork rinds). All of this is mixed and cooked into a “hash” and served with fried eggs on the side and topped with crumbles of queso fresco. It is so delicious!
Another plantain-based breakfast is bolón and eggs. In this case, the mashed green plantain looks more like a giant dumpling filled with cheese and bits of chopped pork. It is similar to tigrillo, but the plantain mixture is rolled into a ball and fried. Again, it is served with eggs, coffee, and jugo (juice).
The Ecuadorians serve jugo with almost every meal--probably because they have so many wonderful, delicious fruits to choose from. Their juices are almost like smoothies. They blend up the fruit, strain out the seeds, and that’s your jugo. These are fruits we don’t have in the States. Naranjilla (orange), tomate de arbol (which is nothing like tomato juice, but sweet), guava, guanabana (soursop), tamarillo, and mora (blackberry) are typical fruit juices you would have with your breakfast and lunch.
Those are my two preferred Ecuadorian breakfasts, but I often just have oatmeal at home during the week. Weekends are when I opt for these tasty, more complicated meals in the local restaurants.
For reference, breakfast can cost anywhere between $2.50 to $8.00 depending on how nice the restaurant and the meal. Some days I get breakfast at a place near my apartment.
