Vegan Enchiladas

I know, it looks gross, but it tastes great.

Okay, this is nowhere near authentic. I tried to make authentic enchilada sauce and it was a horrific failure. So here's my version. Note, the chipotle pepper in adobo sauce is what gives this sauce the right flavour. It will be spicy. I don't know how to avoid this. If you like spicy, then add more peppers!

Ingredients

• 1 can kidney beans, drained
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• a bit of cooking oil
• 1 can whole tomatoes (diced and crushed are inferior quality. A guy who used to work in a tomato canning factory told me!)
• 1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, with some sauce 
• 1/2 onion, chopped roughly
• 2 cloves garlic
• 4-6 small corn or flour tortillas
• shredded vegan cheese (I used Daiya mozzarella)

Let's do it!

Refried Beans:

1. Heat the cooking oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the kidney beans and cumin and stir to coat the beans. 
2. Mash the beans with a potato masher and add some water to make it more of a paste. I add water several times during this process as it gets absorbed by the beans. You want it to be thick, but not so thick that you can't spread it on something easily. I added more water and simmered this on low while I made the sauce.

Sauce:

1. Drain the can of whole tomatoes into a blender. 
2. Deseed the tomatoes. I do this by submerging them in a bowl of water, opening each tomato and scraping the seeds out with my fingers under the water.
3. Put the tomatoes, onion, garlic, chipotle pepper and about 2 teaspoons of the adobo sauce into the blender. 
4. Blend until it's all blended nicely together.
5. Let this mixture simmer in a small soup pot for about 30 minutes, or until you no longer taste raw onions.

Put it together!

1. Warm up the tortillas in the microwave under a damp paper towel. You want them to be pliable so they don't break when you try to roll them. Like mine did.
2. In an oven safe casserole dish, ladle a thin layer of sauce.
3. Take your tortilla, put a line of beans in the middle, then some shredded cheese. Roll it up and put it cut side down into the dish.
4. Repeat until you fill the dish.
5. Top with more cheese, then a generous helping of sauce.
6. Broil in the oven until the cheese is melted!

Lunch it up!

This lunch is a hot mess when it's cooked. It's also a meal unto itself, so I just stuck it in a lunch container and heated it up at work. Also, the husband can eat real cheese and prefers flour tortillas to corn, so I made a separate dish for him.

Vegan cheesy chili

Yeah, let's totally pretend that I'm going to eat 7 chips with this, and not  that entire bag behind it.

The first rule of chili is that it needs to be bad for you. This is junk food, so despite all the veggies and lack of fat in this dish, it still has to taste like a heavy, hearty treat and not a healthy tomato stew that your saint of a mother made for you on a cold winter's afternoon. That's where Daiya comes in.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup red onion, diced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 minced chipotle pepper in adobo sauce (or more, if you like spicy)
• 2 tbsp chili powder (bought or made)
• 1 can red kidney (or any other) beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 can (roughly 3 cups) spaghetti sauce
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 1/2 cup corn 
• 1/2 cup quinoa, rinsed and drained
• 1/2 cup or more Daiya vegan mozzarella cheese shreds

Let's do it!

1. Add a bit of oil to a medium sized soup pot. Set stove to medium.
2. When warm, add onions and stir until translucent. 
3. Add garlic, chipotle and chili powder. Stir for a couple of minutes.
4. Add a can of spaghetti sauce and maybe 1/3 can of water. This is where the unhealthiness begins. These things are loaded with salt! If you actually want this to be healthy, I suppose you can make your own tomato sauce.
5. Add kidney beans and bring to a simmer. Cover and simmer on low for about half an hour. I like to simmer beans for a while because I heard it keeps you from getting gassy. I don't know if this is true, but I always do this and manage not to be unbearable after eating beans.
6. Add red peppers and corn (I used frozen corn and didn't bother defrosting). Simmer for another 15 minutes. Don't worry too much about the timing, I was doing this while cleaning the house and watching TV. Chili is incredibly forgiving.
7. Add quinoa and simmer for at least another 15 minutes. This adds a nice texture which would ordinarily come from meat. It's also healthy. Sorry.
8. Add Daiya cheese and stir until blended. If you know Daiya, you know that it tastes a lot like processed cheese and will transform your chili into a rich, gooey, delicious mess. Take that, mom! (Kidding, my mom is awesome.)
9. Add water if you think it's too thick, more chili powder if you think it's missing that flavour, salt, pepper, whatever. It's your's, make it the way you want!

Lunch it up!

I'm really committing to this being unhealthy so I brought this to work, heated it up and ate it with tortilla chips.

If you can't imagine a world without meat, check out my meat-filled chili here.

Vegan enchilladas

Alright, the way I did this wasn't vegan, but it can easily be vegan. These are nowhere near authentic, it's just how I make them. They are stuffed with refried beans and rice, and covered with a spicy tomato sauce.

Ingredients

• 1 can black beans
• 1 tbsp cooking oil
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• Salt to taste
• Water

• 1/2 cup rice
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• Enough broth to cook the rice (sorry, I don't measure when I cook rice. I just let my Chinese ancestry guide me. Maybe there's directions in the package or something.)

• 1/2 can crushed tomatoes
• 3 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, minced

• Flour tortillas
• Cheese (vegan or otherwise)
• Avocado

Let's do it!

1. In a small sauce pot, heat up the cooking oil (I used bacon grease, but you can use whatever you like.) Drain and rinse the black beans and add to the pot. Stir often. Mash with a potato masher. If it starts sticking to the bottom, add a bit of water. I find that I need to add water quite a bit during the process.
2. Add cumin and salt to taste. Stir until the consistency is like very creamy mashed potatoes. Refried beans: DONE
3. Rinse the rice very well in a sieve to get rid of the starch, otherwise, you won't have the nice, separated grains that I like.
4. Put the rice, broth and garlic in a rice cooker. If you don't have a rice cooker, do whatever it is you do to make rice. Honestly, I can't make rice without a rice cooker. Rice: DONE!
5. Put the crushed tomatoes in a small sauce pot with the chipotle peppers. If you don't like spice, add less peppers. Then.. give the rest of them to a friend? I don't know.
6. Simmer this while the rice is cooking. Sauce: DONE!
7. Put this all in the fridge if you're like me and prefer to assemble the next day

Lunch it up!

1. I didn't want this to be soggy, so I assembled it before work.
2. On a flour tortilla, lay down some refried beans, then rice. 
3. Roll it up and place in a microwavable lunch container, seam side down.
4. Repeat for as many as you'd like.
5. Cover with as much sauce as you'd like and sprinkle with cheese.
6. Take it to work with an avocado and try not to let either get bashed up too much.
7. At work, heat this up in a microwave until hot. Cut up the avocado and place on top (Avocados get brown really easily, which is why I prefer to take them to work whole.)
8. Enjoy!

I ended up with a lot of leftover rice and beans. This is probably good for a maybe 3 or four meals. If you're not into eating the same thing every day, you can place the beans in a freezer bag, squeeze out the air and place it in the freezer. Same thing with the sauce. I've heard that you can freeze rice, but I've never tried it. It's a pretty mild flavour, though, so you can use it as a side in another dish.

Fajita-rama

Note, the white things are leftover brown rice thrown in.

Fajitas are always a winner in our house, due to the husband's fondness for wraps. They're also pretty easy to make. Here's a recipe I made yesterday that yields about 4-5 servings.

Ingredients

3 large red peppers, seeded and sliced into strips

1 large green pepper, seeded and sliced into strips

2 medium red onions, peeled and sliced into strips

2 chicken thighs, deboned and sliced into strips

1 cup diced smoked sausage

3 tablespoons or more of Tex-Mex seasoning mix (recipe to follow)

Tex-Mex seasoning mix:

1 part paprika

2 parts cumin

1 part cayenne

1 part oregano

2 parts garlic powder

Put it all in a jar with a tight fitting lid. I like to keep a batch of this in the kitchen to quickly throw together tacos, fajitas or chili.

Let's do it!

Put the meat in a container with a tablespoon of Tex Mex powder. Mix well and let marinate while you're cooking the veggies.

Heat a large pot/wok to medium high and add enough oil to lightly coat the bottom. 

Throw in the veggies and saute, stirring until really soft. This took an agonizing amount of time because I started with low heat. Don't make my mistake. Start high and keep stirring! I also threw the bones in with the veggies for added flavour.

When the veggies are soft, throw in 2 tablespoons of seasoning and stir until well mixed. Add the meat and cook until cooked, maybe another 10 minutes. At this point, taste and adjust for salt and seasoning. Add hot peppers if you like it spicy.

Lunch it up!

I pack the fajita mix in a tight-fitting container and put a couple of tortillas in a ziploc bag. To eat, heat them up separately. The tortillas take about 10 seconds, the filling will take about two minutes, since it's got meat in it.

Optional: If you're a fancy pants, bring along some sprigs of parsley, a couple wedges of lime and an avocado (cut it up at work to reduce grossness)

Enjoy!