[Sca-cooks] Plantains: Period for Old World?

[Judith Epstein]

In another thread, we discussed the notion that tomatoes were first  
used (at least, in the Near East) as they would originally have used  
either eggplants or plums. This weekend, I tried four varieties of  
plums in a dish that I usually make with one to four varieties of  
tomatoes (depending on what's fresh and juicy at the market), and WOW,  
was that good.

So. I know bananas are Old World (Period for Asia, Africa, and the  
Middle/Near East). I was reading on Joe Pastry blog (http://joepastry.web.aplus.net/?blog=1&page=1&paged=2 
) that plantains are often for a lot of the things that normally use  
potatoes. I'm wondering if potatoes, when first brought back from the  
New World, were used in ways that they would have normally used  
plantains.

This is confusing as I try to word it, so let me try again. Here's a  
supposition (which I'm not married to, and I'm just as happy to have  
it shot down as to have it triumphantly confirmed):

1. The Old World had recipes, techniques, or treatments that used  
plantains as the starch.
2. Potatoes were brought from the New World to the Old World.
3. People weren't sure what to do with potatoes, so after a bit of  
suspicious glaring, they started to use them in the dishes that had  
originally used plantains.
4. Plantain use waned while potato use waxed.
5. Recipes evolved as time passed, sometimes very slowly and sometimes  
rapidly.
6. Now a dish that uses potatoes COULD conceivably be made with  
plantains instead, and it MIGHT be Period. (Documentably? Probably  
not, or someone would have surely crowed about it and done it by now,  
right? But it might be "reasonably Period" or "Peri-oid," right?)

Shoot me down fast, please, before I get really excited about trying  
something like this. Start with whether plantains are Old World, or  
whether they're a species of the Musa genus that only developed after  
bananas made it over to the New World, so I know whether this weird  
thought may have any basis whatsoever in reality.

Judith