Cuban Pulled Pork + Mojo Sauce + Tostones = Ambrosia of the Greek gods.  Okay, I'm mixing cultures and time periods now, but seriously.  This is a match made in Olympus of ingredients for primal-friendly sandwiches.

I'm fairly new to Cuban food, as I've said on the pulled pork recipe, but that didn't stop me from knowing that the pork and Mojo sauce recipes were just gateway foods to making this bad boy.  You need this in your life.  I need this in my life.  Why did I eat it already?  I want another one!

Sandwiches are things I don't have much anymore because, well, bread.  And I'm not too keen on making my own paleo sandwich bread regularly, mostly because I don't really miss it.  But Cuban food is something I didn't get into until after I went paleo, so I never had a Cubano sandwich.  But the meat and Mojo sauce are SO GOOD that I just knew I needed to come up with a way to combat my laziness in making bread and still get to try one for myself.  So what better way to do that than with Tostones, one of my all-time favorites staples since going paleo?

Seriously.  Pull a Nike on this one and just do it.  Okay, enough of these weird Greek-gods references in regards to Cuban food.  Go make these, dang it.

Cubano Sandwiches

Prep time: 5 minutes   Cook time:  15 minutes   Total time: 20 minutes MAX

Yield: Four 6-inch sandwiches

Directions

Ingredients

  1. Prepare the first two recipes as directed.  They take longer than the actual sandwich.
  2. Cut the onions and plantains as indicated, and heat the coconut oil in a large pan on the stove over medium heat.  
  3. Add onion slices to the coconut oil and sauté until they're translucent and fragrant.  Remove from the pan once they're soft and place on a paper towel-lined plate to cool, leaving as much oil as possible in the pan.  
  4. Add sliced plantains to the hot oil (add more, if needed) and cook each side until slightly browned, like large versions of Tostones.  Once each side is toasted, remove from the pan (leave the heat on under the pan, though) and use a coconut oil-greased glass jar to press the large plantain pieces flat, also like in the Tostones recipe.  You'll probably have to start at one end of the plantain piece and press along it with the jar several times to get the whole thing crushed, so go slow and be careful not to let one part stick to the jar!  You don't want to break the plantain pieces because they will be your giant tostone "buns." :)
  5. Once the plantains are flattened, add back to the still-hot oil and fry each side again until brown and crispy, or to the doneness you'd like.  
  6. Pull the giant tostones out of the pan, allow to cool for a few minutes, and then build your sandwiches.  Take one tostone, layer some onions on top, then the pulled pork, then some tomato slices, some cheese slices, drizzle on the Mojo Sauce, and then another tostone on top to pull it together.  The heat from the tostones should melt the cheese, but you can also pop it in the microwave or toast it a bit in the oven at 350ºF for 10-ish minutes to really get it stringy.  Then dig in!

1 batch Cuban Pulled Pork

1 batch Mojo Sauce

2 green plantains, sliced in half the short way and then half again the long way

1/3 cup coconut oil

1 heirloom tomato, sliced

1 4oz block Fontina cheese (preferably grass-fed or organic & only if tolerated), sliced thin

1/3 yellow onion, sliced