– Get me some vegetarian enchiladas – STAT! –
For me, cold weather means a slight increase in spicy food. Not too much of an increase – I’m the world’s biggest puss when it comes to spiciness – but just enough to break a slight sweat and warm those frigid toes a bit. This week’s loveliness in the form of vegetarian enchiladas is care of Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Romero over at the Post Punk Kitchen. Their new book, Veganomicon, really is the ultimate vegan cookbook. It’s literally a tome of goodness.
This week I made the potato kale vegetarian enchiladas with a side of mexican millet (in our haze we kept calling it mexican mullet. heh). I can tell you that as the first thing I’ve made from this book, it was divine. Better than divine. I’ve made a lot of good gluten free vegan food, but the flavor and subtle spiciness that these two recipes packed was really unexpected for, well, potatoes, kale, and millet.
There’s so much crammed into this book that you probably won’t need another one for quite a while. Well, until Lolo’s book comes out, at least.
Potato Kale Vegetarian Enchiladas with Roasted Chili Sauce
Ingredients
Chile sauce ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 small onion diced
- 3 large Anaheim chiles roasted, peeled, and seeded
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon fresh marjoram leaves
- One 28-ounce can roasted diced tomatoes with their juice
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 2 teaspoons salt
Potato kale filling ingredients:
- 1 pound potatoes
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 1/2 pound kale washed, trimmed of stem, and chopped fine
- 1 large carrot diced
- 1/4 cup baby peas
- 1/4 cup baby corn kernels
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/4 cup vegetable broth
- 3 tablespoons lime juice (from two to three limes)
- 1/4 cup toasted pumpkin seeds chopped coarsely
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
- 12 tortillas
- Vegan sour cream for garnish
Instructions
Make the sauce
- In a large, heavy bottom sauce pan, saute onion in olive oil over medium heat until soft – about five minutes. Add remaining sauce ingredients, bring up to a simmer, and remove from heat.
- When mixture has cooled a bit, taste and adjust salt if necessary. Blend the sauce with an immersion blender until smooth (I just poured the mix into my regular blender and used that… it makes far less of a splattery mess than the immersion blender).
Make the filling
- Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).
- Start a large pot of water to boil on the stove. Peel potatoes if you like (I leave the skins on for taste and texture) and chop them into 1-inch cubes. Add to potatoes boiling water and boil until tender, about 15 minutes, then drain, mash a bit with a fork, and set aside.
- Over a medium-low flame, heat olive oil until it shimmers. Add garlic and cook for one minute, stirring constantly.
- Add kale, carrots, peas, and corn, and sprinkle with a little sea salt. Increase burner level to medium, stirring constantly to mix kale, oil, and garlic. Cover and steam for about five minutes, until greens are wilted.
- Remove lid and mix in potatoes, mashing a bit more as you go. You want it loose, but with nice potato-y chunks. Add veggie broth, lime juice, cumin, pumpkin seeds, salt, and pepper, cooking another four minutes, until the stock is absorbed. Add more stock or lime juice to taste, then remove from heat.
Assemble the enchiladas:
- Pour about 3/4 cup of enchilada sauce into a pie plate or deep dinner plate. Create an assembly line in this order: lightly oiled hot cast iron pan for softening tortillas, plate with sauce, filling, and the baking dish where you’ll be putting your finished enchiladas.
- Ladle a little sauce into the baking dish and spread it around to lightly cover the bottom. Take a corn tortilla, set it into the hot cast iron pan for 20 seconds, then flip it over and repeat. Once the tortilla is soft and pliable, drop it into the pie plate to completely coat it in sauce, then flip and repeat.
- Place tortilla in baking dish and run a generous amount of potato filling down the center, rolling it up and placing it in the dish. Continue with the rest of the tortillas, leaving about a quarter inch between them so that they will be easier to plate.
- Pour 1 1/2 cups of sauce over the top of the enchiladas, reserving the rest for later. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 25 minutes, then remove foil and bake for another ten minutes to brown the edges of tortillas.
- Allow to cool slightly before serving (they’ll be hot!) and top with a little more enchilada sauce and a dollop of vegan cilantro sour cream.
Nutrition
This content was originally posted on FearlessFresh.com.