In Puerto Rico, we all have it. The “plantain* stain,” or mancha de plátano, the permanent mark that we believe invisibly brands us as Puerto Ricans and which  we carry with national pride and even proclaim aloud in moments of patriotic exaltation.

No Puerto Rican is born with this trait (to date no plantain-stain gene has been found), but we do seem to have an innate predisposition to a life of eating, tirelessly and to satiety, plantains. A life of getting to know the pleasures of a food that has influenced not just the building of our bodies, but our history, culture, traditions, and landscape.

You see plantain fields In Puerto Rico as you see vines in Italy, or corn and wheat in the U.S. Hanging plantain clusters or racimos are the most conspicuous item at any roadside fruit-and-vegetable stand or traditional mini-market. There are festivals to celebrate the plantain, kitchen inventions devised just for them, and even colloquialisms that constantly remind us of the stuff of which we are all made.

Today, plantains figure prominently in our cuisine in an impressive and diverse array of succulent dishes that are both traditional and continuously evolving. But there is a price to pay in exchange for the ubiquity of this food, and it is a fact that plantains stain, and stain in more than just one way.

First stain: If you have ever taken a machete out to the fieldto chop down a plantain racimo or more mundanely spent time in your kitchen peeling green plantains, you know that, no matter what precautions you take, your clothes will get the plantain stain. Both the stalk and the skin exude a sticky sap that shows a particularly strong affinity to white cotton. You may not notice it in the field or in the kitchen, but it will always show up, almost unexplainably, after your next machine-wash, and once a piece of cloth is stained, it remains so forever. You eventually learn to designate special plantain clothing—pants, shirts, aprons—that become domestic stain records of every plantain that passes through the house.

Second stain: From an early age, although lacking physical evidence, I reasoned that the Puerto Rican plaintain stain must surely be a stain on our insides. Just as shirts became stained, so do our stomachs. Eventually it spreads to the rest of the body, reaching the inner lining of the skin itself. There it remains invisible, but, peeking through the pores to the outside world, it allows Puerto Ricans to spot each other in a crowd.

Puerto Ricans eating a predominantly traditional diet will achieve the inner plantain stain within a decade of moving on from their mother’s milk. Plantains are eaten boiled, steamed, mashed, puréed, grated, baked, grilled, fried or double-fried. From green to ripe, every stage of the maturing process reveals different organoleptic profiles. The culinary possibilities are endless; the joy of eating plantains indefatigable.

Boiled with salt, plátanos hervidos comfortingly complement any other simple dish. They are mixed with other root vegetables, dressed in olive or coconut oil, stir-fried with other vegetables or meat, and mashed with oil, garlic, and herbs for a Puerto Rican-style mangú. Pureéd with herbs, seasonings, and broth or coconut milk for a cream of plantain. Grated and added to a rich broth for a light plantain soup. Grated over rice for arroz aplatana’o. Grated and mixed with other grated root vegetables to create the revered and mythical pasteles de masa. Used seasoned as stuffing for pork, chicken, and turkey. Fried in pieces, mashed with olive or coconut oil, lots of garlic, and crunchy pork rinds for the cult-status dish mofongo. Fried pieces, flattened into disks, and fried again for our emblematic and ubiquitous tostones. Sliced thin and fried for platanutres. If the plantain is ripe, it is no longer a plátano for us, but a maduro or amarillo, which can be grilled by itself for amarillos asados or baked with sugar and cinnamon for amarillos en almíbar. They stain all the same.

Besides the better-known rice and beans, the plantain is how we Puerto Ricans stain ourselves. Throughout our lives more and more of us acquire the stain, forming part of our collective soul, our national identity, and our connection with the land. It follows us wherever we go, silently guiding us, helping us find plantain nourishment wherever we are. During my year in Italy I found plantains and made tostones, platanutres, arañitas, and amarillos, even plantain-leaf-wrapped pasteles, right in the heart of the land of Parma Ham. Proudly Puerto Rican, I too have plantain stain, and I hope I left just a little bit of it behind.

*The fruit of the tropical plant species Musa paradisiaca, of the musaceae family, native to Southeast Asia. It is a close relative of the common sweet banana but eaten mostly as a vegetable.