Enchiladas Verde

This is an oldie but goodie. It's an adaptation from the enchiladas my mom made from shredded chicken and cream of chicken soup. Jeeze, chicken chicken meat meat meat. This is much healthier. Here's the recipe:


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Enchiladas Verde

5 tortillas
2 bags Boca Burger Crumbles
2 cans Old El Paso enchiladas verde sauce
1 can diced chiles
1/2 cup vegan sour cream

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a medium bowl, combine the burger crumbles and 1/2 of one can of sauce. Microwave until warm. Distribute this evenly in five tortillas, roll them all up, and lay them seam side down in a 9x9 pan. Combine the rest of the sauce, the chiles, and the sour cream and blend well. Pour this over the enchiladas.

I put cheddar cheese on mine, since I'm not vegan, and left the others for Miah.

Bake, uncovered, for 30 minutes or until the sides are bubbly and the middle is hot.

Serve with salsa and vegan sour cream.

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This is good ol' comfort food for me. Delicious, creamy, and spicy. Best of all, it's super fast. You could totally make another 3 or 4 enchiladas (with another pack of Crumbles) with the sauce, too; I just like mine saucy.

Verdict: Awesome. A quick, easy standby that you can make from stuff already in your pantry.

Linguine with sage and white bean sauce, plus marinated tofu

Good one tonight. Miah made this dish, combining the recipe from our fave vegan cookbook, Robin Robertson's Vegan Planet. He added some marinated tofu, too. Very, very good.

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Linguine With Sage And White Bean Sauce (from Vegan Planet)

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small yellow onion, minced
1/4 cup torn fresh sage leaves (**Miah used around 1 tablespoon dried sage)
15 ounce can of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
black pepper
1/2 cup hot vegetable stock
1 pound linguine

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, cover, and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the sage and cook for 1 minute. Add the beans, vinegar, salt, and pepper to taste and stir to blend the flavors.

Transfer to a food processor or blender, add the stock, and process until smooth, adding more stock if necessary. Transfter to a small saucepan over low heat and keep warm, adding more stock if the sauce is too thick.

Cook the linguine in a large pot of boiling salted water, stirring occasionally, until al dente, about 10 minutes. Drain and place into a large, shallow serving bowl. Add the sauce and toss to combine.

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He used dried sage instead of fresh, and it was totally fine. I love the subtle flavors: you could just barely pick out everything (balsamic vinegar, cannellini beans, onions) but all together they were really nice.

The tofu was incredible. We struggle with tofu sometimes. We eat it constantly, and I've been experimenting for months, but the texture is hard to get just right. Miah pressed it for 50 minutes, marinated it for 30 minutes, and then baked it. It was probably the best tofu I've had, certainly better than anything I've ever made. (BTW, this was Miah's first tofu-cooking experiment. I give him a big fat A+.)

Verdict: Really awesome. An excellent, nutrition-filled vegan dinner. Very filling, very fiber-filled, very protien-filled, very flavor-filled. Good job, Miah!

Suppertime! Vegan pizza

Tonight, I am making vegan pizza. Strangely, it's the first time I've tried it, even though it's probably one of the easiest vegan dinners to make.

I used one loaf of frozen pizza dough. (I took out of the freezer this morning and let it thaw/rise on an oiled plate with oiled plastic wrap over it.) I pressed the dough into a baking pan and let it rest a bit. (I have nicer baking pans, I swear, and I also have a baking stone. However, the pro-grade pans are too big, and the stone is too small, so I used this perfectly sized cookie sheet instead.) Then I baked it for around 10 minutes on the lowest rack of my oven set at 375 degrees.

Then, I made my pizza sauce. You could definitely use jarred, but I didn't have any, so I used this:

2 largeish tomatoes, blanched, skinned, and quartered
1/4 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
tomato paste

Heat the olive oil and cook the onions, garlic, and spices for about five minutes. Add the tomatoes and salt and cook it all for another five minutes. Then, put it in a blender and blend until smooth. Return to the pot, add the tomato paste, and simmer until you're ready to use it.

Once my crust was ready I topped it with the sauce. Then I added a layer of thinly-sliced red potatoes; then sprinkled one package of Boca Burger Crumbles over that; the added some diced onion; then a layer of thinly-sliced zucchini; then sprinkled some olives on top.

I baked the whole thing for 30 minutes.

Verdict: It was really good! I would change a couple of things, though. I would put the zucchini on the bottom and the potatoes on the top. I would also add a sprinkle of Italian seasoning on the sauce, after I've spread it on the crust. I thought I had put enough in the sauce when I made it, but I guess not, and I usually add another sprinkle on my normal pizzas, so I should do it this time, too.

I think this would be really good with highly-flavored vegetables, such as carmelized onions, marinated artichokes, or roasted red peppers. Yum!