Vegan Dinner Recipe: Black-bean filled tortillas with sweet potato

This recipe is the bomb. We are big fans of Mexican-style food in this house, and obviously the discovery of tofutti sour cream meant that we hardly had a dent in the Mexican experience after switching to vegan. These tortillas (or are they enchilladas? buritos? I JUST DON'T KNOW!) have a variety of fillings to cram in for the perfect balance in taste. And, while there are a lot of components, the cooking of them is dead easy.

Ingredients:

Black bean mix:
A cup of dry blackbeans, soaked and cooked, or, a tin of blackbeans
A tin of corn
An onion or a shallot
Three cloves of garlic
Two teaspoons of coriander seeds, crushed (you can use coriander powder, but it's going to lack a level of complexity)
Half a teaspoon of cumin
A SMALL quarter teaspoon of cinnamon (don't go overboard with the cinnamon, it's meant to be SUBTLE)
Half a teaspoon of salt
Half a cup of red wine

Avocado mix:
An avocado
Four cherry tomatos
A shallot
A squeeze of lemon juice
A splash of oil
A pinch of salt
A handful of chopped coriander
If you can get one, a fresh, in season mango. (I couldn't get one. But in summer, definitely go the extra mango mile!)

Tortillas:
Two cups of flour
A teaspoon of baking powder
Half a teaspoon of salt
A quarter of a cup of oil
A half cup of warm water

Other bits and pieces:
A sweet potato
Tofutti sour cream
Tabasco
Jalepeno peppers
Anything else you can think of!

Instructions:

Pre heat your oven to about 180. Chop the sweet potato into small chunks (they're being wrapped in a tortilla with other stuff so you don't want them too chunky). Put the chunks on an oiled tray with a bit of oil and salt on top. Bake for about half an hour, or until soft and a little crispy and caramelised on the corners.

Prepare the tortillas:

Combine the flour, salt and baking powder. Rub in the oil with your fingers. Add the warm water, and mix up into a soft dough. Don't overmix.

Wrap the dough in glad-wrap and leave for half and hour to an hour (depending on what you want to do in the meantime.

I recommend... MAKING THE AVOCADO MIX AND THE BEAN MIX!

Avocado mix:

This is basically like guacamole, but in these tortillas I prefer the avocado cut up instead of mashed. So, dice the avocado, quarter the cherry tomatoes, dice the shallot, chop the mango into little squares if you've managed to get your hands on it, and put all those things and everything else (lemon juice, oil, salt, coriander etc) in a bowl and mix well.

Black bean mix:

Make sure your beans are ready. If this means opening the can, cool. If this means soaking them for a couple of hours, then cooking them in simmering water until they're ready to eat, also cool. Use black beans though, go out of your way to find black beans. They are superior to kidney beans or similar, although they will do in a pinch.

Dice and fry up your onion and garlic over a low to medium heat.

Mortar and pestle up your coriander. It doesn't have to be too fine, you can leave some chunks in.

Add the coriander to the onion and garlic. Stir for a couple of minutes. Add the salt, cumin, and cinnamon and stir.

Pour the red wine in and turn up the heat a little, until the wine is boiling.

Add the beans and canned corn. Stir. Turn the heat down to low-medium and cook for seven to ten minutes, stirring occasionally, until all the wine has been absorbed/evaporated.

This is ready to eat.

Now, let's get back to the tortillas.

Divide the dough into eight relatively equal pieces. Heat a frypan (dry, no oil) on a medium to high heat while you prepare the dough.

Use a LOT of flour on your workspace. Roll out each of the eight tortillas, very thing and well floured.

When each of the tortillas is rolled, drop one in the hot pan. Time it for thirty seconds, it should be raising in large pockets in the dough.

Flip the tortilla using tongs and leave it for thirty seconds. Don't over cook them, they'll go crunchy!

Stack them on a plate to serve as you cook them.

Now it's time to put them together! I like to serve this meal as a communal dining table experience; put the beans, sweet potato, avocado, condiments and tortillas on the table and let the family assemble as they will! But don't pack your tortilla to full of fillings!

 

 That's a jalapeno on top of mine, what a foolish move!!

Now fold them up thusly:

And voila! All you can eat (unless you can eat more than eight tortillas, in which case... make more tortillas!