Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Vegan Fajitas with Mushrooms and Roasted Sweet Potato

A little Mexican spice is a great way to brighten up a Monday evening!  Last night for dinner we had delicious Vegan Fajitas, or Burritos, or whatever you like to call them.

Here is what we put in them, first in pictures and then the recipe follows.

Mushrooms in Mexican Spice Mix and Roasted Sweet Potato Strips.
A smudge of Tomato Salsa and creamy Avocado.

Baby Spinach leaves and Rocket, topped with the mushrooms and sweet potato.
Rolled and ready to eat (I had two of these and dear husband had 3).

Ingredients:

Spice Mix:
1 teaspoon each of:
- Ground Chilli
- Smoked Paprika
- Salt (or powdered vegetable stock)
- Cornflour
- Castor Sugar
½ teaspoon each of:
- Ground Cumin
- Cayenne Pepper

Olive oil for cooking
1 large (or 2 small) sweet potatoes (That is Kumera for the Kiwis).
 4 large field mushrooms
1 small onion, sliced.
1 clove of garlic, crushed
Salad greens (baby spinach leaves and rocket works really well)
1 small avocado - mashed
Salsa (I used salsa from a jar last night to save time but if you are not as lazy as me you could make your own).
4-6 Tortillas (Wraps)

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180oC.
2. Cut sweet potato into halves or thirds, and then into wedges.  Place in baking tray.  Drizzle generously with olive oil and toss.  Bake for 45+ minutes depending on how caramalized you like your roast veggies.
3. Combine all the spice mix ingredients in a plastic bag (eg freezer bag) and toss.  You can use more or less chilli and cayenne pepper depending on how hot you like your Mexican food.
4. Slice mushrooms into strips (not too thin).  Put in the bag with the spice mix and toss gently until all the strips are well coated.
5. When your sweet potatoes are nearly done, saute the onions in a little olive oil.  Add mushrooms and garlic and fry over a medium heat until the mushrooms are well done.
6.  Assemble the fajitas as show in the photos above and enjoy!!

Monday, July 23, 2012

Chickpea Piccata

This dish is soooo good.  Thank you once again dear Isa.  One of my favorite comfort foods (creamy mashed potato) all fancied up and tasting devine.  My taste buds are very happy right now.  And it is very simple and quick to prepare.  This is definitely going on regular rotation in our house.

You can find the recipe here on the Post Punk Kitchen web site: Chickpea Picatta.
(As per Isa's spelling of Picatta).


I served this with lots of rocket (the recipe called for arugula which I had never heard of but a quick google revealed that it is rocket.)  I made a half serve of Thermomix mashed potato - so creamy!  That's 500gm of potatoes.  I used Vitasoy Calciplus milk and plenty of Nutelex for the potato. 

Dear husband was a bit dubious about the flavor of the capers diffusing through the whole dish so I left them out and then used them to garnish.  This worked really well.  I sprinkled a little of the brine from the capers over mine along with a drizzle of truffle oil.  Heaven!

According to the recipe this should serve 4 but actually dear husband and I managed to polish it off for one meal.  This amount would make a great entree for 4 people, but I can't see it stretching to 4 adult sized mains.  I can't wait to make this next time we have an omnivore over for dinner.