Tag Archives: tacos

Blog Recipe Round Up: Tacos

December 6, 2017

Oh boy are there a million tacos out there! We are just barely scratching the surface with what’s out there. And even though they are all over pinterest, I think this was one of the hardest compilations to get together. Why? I think tacos are just way too easy to stray away from the original recipe. But I did it! So check out the recipes below!

Falafel Tacos with Sriracha-Tahini Sauce

This recipe is actually an amazing weeknight meal. Aside from my kitchen being so small that taking out the food processor is a pain, it is a super meal. All you need to dirty up is really the food processor, a baking tray, and cutting board. And while the falafels bake, you can clean up most of the dishes. Brilliant! The dinner made pretty much spot on what it would make- granted if you eat only two tacos. That can be hard since they are so tasty, but two tacos has 16 grams of protein. Not too bad considering my husband at three- which would be 24 grams of protein. Downside, I think the sriracha-tahini sauce was a little too thick, but then again I was getting to the bottom of tahini where they was very little oil.

Bottom Line: Quick and easy weeknight dinner

Beer and Lime Cauliflower Tacos

There’s been a lot of hub-bub with Thug Kitchen and if their writing is mocking African Americans. Although I find the juxtaposition of harsh language in a medium that uses flower language funny, I do think they could of done it without singling out a certain culture. I never really intended to check out Thug Kitchen, but I found this really yummy recipe that I just wanted to try badly.

Did the recipe hold up? Umm…no. The salsa was pretty darn spicy. Which to me isn’t too big of a deal except there was a lot of hot sauce in the cauliflower portion. I like it when you divide the heat up within certain ingredients, not piling on everything hot. The cauliflower was very watery from the beer, which makes me wondering if it would of worked better as sort of a “refried” cauliflower filling? And overall there were WAY too much onion flavor. I didn’t even use as much as they recommend since I didn’t have them, like adding more green onions!

There were some great flavor combos, but there should of been more finessing with the cooking process. Maybe saute the onions in the cauliflowers, only spice in the salsa, etc. Overall it isn’t bad though.

Bottom Line: Alright recipe, needs more streamlining.

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Sweet Potato Pecan Tacos

There is so much flavor going on with these tacos. They are easy to make and great for a more fall based taco when sweet potatoes are in season and when the temperature is going down (to turn the oven on). The great thing about the recipe is that the author is very open to variations so I did and found ways to improve the taco.

One thing I found needed improvement in the recipe is the texture. She has a smooth bean spread and soft sweet potatoes that probably have a nice outside texture from roasting. BUT I felt like it needed a little extra tooth, and adding quick pickled shredded cabbage I think did the trick. Avocados are also a major must as well, if it is in your price range.

I loved the flavor from the coconut cream, but it seemed more like something that would be great as a dressing. The blog post does suggest that this dish makes a great salad, so maybe I missed the memo that the cream was just suppose to be a dressing? Maybe, maybe not. But I wouldn’t bother with it unless you want to make a salad over a taco.

Bottom Line: Super yummy, but needs a lettuce or cabbage paired with it.

Black Bean + Tempeh Tacos with Cashew Cheese Sauce

This recipe is pretty easy and fast to make. What is both nice and disappointing about this recipe is how flexible it is. There aren’t any specifically highlighted flavors, which I tend to like from a taco recipe. But it does give a recipe for a very flexible taco filling that you can pretty much do any day of the week. Don’t have avocado? You’ll be fine. Don’t have cabbage? Just use lettuce. So I could imagine using this recipe as a basic structure to make on a busy weeknight.

I did NOT make the cashew cheese sauce mostly because I had some homemade vegan sour cream that needed to get used up. But the recipe for the cashew cheese sauce looks pretty good, and would of made a great addition to the tacos. Overall I think this is a recipe I might use again, it only took about 15 minutes to make. And as mentioned it is pretty flexible for interpretation, and she makes sure you still get your greens.

Bottom Line: Great recipe for starter vegans.

Tequila Lime Baked Tofu Tacos with Chipotle Crema

This recipe involves a lot of planning, but overall pretty easy. What takes the most amount of time is freezing the tofu, thawing it, pressing, then marinating. None of those steps take particularly long, but you need to think ahead. I think most vegans don’t know how to plan these steps since these are mostly common for meats. But I found that I froze the tofu one day, the next day remove and let thaw in the fridge. Then the day of making I pressed for an hour (it wasn’t fully thawed at the time), and marinated it before heading into work. That way it took a 30 minutes to bake giving lots of prep and clean up time.

BUT I do have a problem with the recipe. Although it was easy to make, there wasn’t nearly enough fat. The overall result was super acidic, but I wish she put a little oil in the marinade, or used cashews for the crema. Aside from that, I was totally happy with the results. There was a little extra of tofu for leftovers (hubs and I had three tacos each) so if you have a big family, you might want to double the tofu.

Bottom Line: Needs a little more fat, but tasty overall

BBQ Eggplant Tacos

Hmm… how do I feel about these tacos. So many emotions. First let me talk about prep work. It is pretty easy. I spent most of the time working on the peach-lime chutney. It wasn’t too hard, but it does involve a lot of fine chopping, so it was probably a total of 30-40 minutes, but worth noting there was lots of time to do other things. In fact I made the fennel slaw while the chutney cooked up. So all I had to do was roast the eggplant and put together the tacos when it came to dinner time. Dividing up the work makes the clean up more manageable.

Flavors have been interesting. I can’t say I hate and I can’t say I love it. My husband summed it up as minty and fruity. I think we both weren’t huge fans of the mix of fennel and peach. I think I might want to “dilute” the fennel by adding a little cabbage next time. Also I didn’t like how the eggplant “shredded.” I mean it kind-of did, but it was mostly just mushy shreds. I would probably just use beans or jackfruit in the future.

And it is worth noting that I had uneven amounts of food. I get it- when your recipe calls for one fennel bulb and mostly nothing else, you are going to have varied amounts. I ended up with a full little jam jar of the chutney. We had NO eggplant leftover, and there was enough slaw for maybe one two extra tacos. Not the worst, but something to keep in mind if you hate leftovers.

Bottom Line: Lots of prep, mixed emotions

What are your favorite taco recipes?

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Posted by Jennifer in Food Review, Reviews Tags: epicurious, Keepin It Kind, nutrition stripped, oh ladycakes, recipe roundup, tacos, thug kitchen, veggie with a cause, yup it's vegan

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Vegan Mofo 2015 Day 22: Miso-Harissa Roasted Acorn Squash Tacos

September 22, 2015

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This was kind-of a weird prompt since I pretty much eat “seasonal” all year long. Why? Well my CSA gives out a LOT of food. Unlike most CSAs that just give you a basket full of food, my CSA is only one farm, that we go to each week. There they have some pre-picked foods and some we need to pick ourselves. There is a big board that says how much we are allowed to take. Some of it is a “pick and choose whatever fills this bag” sort of deal, others are you can pick one of various foods (for example I could of taken two heads of lettuce this week, two bundles of chard, or one of each), and some is take x amount of food. There are also other foods we can buy from other local producers, like pickles, coffee, meats, veggie burgers, and cheeses. Sometimes with the food we are allowed to pick we can take as much as we can if the produce is super abundant. And sometimes they sell some of the extra produce.

We get so much shelf stable food at the end of the year that we usually still cook with it in November and December. So I guess I stop eating seasonally from January to May when I don’t have any incoming produce. I could sign up for their winter produce sales, which I think they just store some of the fall crops but I usually just want to relax and skip it. For todays prompt I tried my best to use 100% all food I got from CSA. I used some other foods, but hey, it probably would be impossible otherwise, right? I mean outside of something like a salad.

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So this dinner is a nice mix of crops that are on their last legs, and crops that are just coming in. I started by making a freaking harissa paste with a bunch of red jalepenos. I used the recipe from Terry Hope Romero’s Vegan Eats World cookbook, but you can get the recipe off of her blog. Pretty much you just roast some peppers, peel them, and puree them with some spices, tomato paste, lemon juice, and garlic. So the tomato paste, lemon juice, and garlic aren’t seasonal. No biggie right?

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Then I proceeded to mix the harissa with some miso and olive oil and toss it in some acorn squash. It seemed a little early this year, but they were so cute and small. I grabbed three. I roasted them along with some peppers and onions (both were from this week at the farm!). I placed them on a flour taco wrap with some lettuce and cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes are pretty much on their last leg at the farm, which is nice and frustrating because they keep popping open! Ack! The lettuce isn’t something that is normally grown in the fall, but you can trick plants into growing.

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And I think that is what we all need to remember when buying local and seasonally. Sometimes you can trick crops and still get great results. I remember first learning about this when I was reading about growing peas. Sites suggested that you can grow them again in the fall by planting seeds and constantly spraying the seeds with cold water in try and “trick” the seeds that it is early spring. There are also foods that we don’t think about getting “fresh” like onions, garlic, and roots. And it is true, they don’t NEED to be fresh exactly. But my CSA divides these up through out the year. For example we get spring beets then again in the fall. We get a few heads of garlic when the pick them from the ground, then we get them again in the fall once they are done curing. Oh and the garlic scapes too!

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This dish was insanely easy and I was really excited how tasty it was! I will happily make this again (next week even if I get more peppers!) You can easily wrap it up in a burrito with some brown rice too!

So to sum it up, these are what I used that AREN’T seasonal produce

flour tortilla wraps (you could probably make raw corn tortillas though!)
1 tbsp miso
1 tsbp olive oil + some more
salt & chili powder
lemon juice + garlic + spices for the harissa

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Posted by Jennifer in Recipe, Vegan Mofo, Vegan Mofo 2015 Tags: acorn squash, bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, csa, green bell pepper, harissa, lettuce, miso, red bell pepper, seasonal, tacos, Vegan MOFO, vegan mofo 2015

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My Vegan Restaurant: Mogo, Asbury Park NJ

March 11, 2015

Mogo

632 Cookman Ave, Asbury Park, NJ 07712 (sit down dining)
850 Ocean Ave, Asbury Park, NJ 07712 (boardwalk stall)
website | facebook | instagram | twitter | youtube

Simply put, Alexa and I love Mogo. It has built a cult status in New Jersey. People have gone and become hooked instantly. It started out a cool little stand by the Asbury Park Boardwalk. It featured korean fusion tacos, and had a pretty simple menu- beef, pork, chicken, fish, or tofu tacos. They had a little bit of hot sauce and kimchi to put on top. Alexa briefly talks about the stall on her Asbury Fresh post.

Mogo announced that they were opening a storefront so they could expand their menu and offer a place for people to eat. Their storefront opened in December 2013, and I hadn’t been able to check it out until now.

The restaurant has a casual set-up. It is similar to Panera or Chipotle, order at the counter and pick a table. But unlike those chains, workers BRING your food to your table, so you don’t have to listen for your name. The menu is similar to the original taco stand. You have six types of proteins: beef, chicken, pork, fish, shrimp, and tofu. Then you have four styles of food: taco, burrito, bowl, and salad. That means as a vegan, I have four different options.

They have other main eating options and sides, but most are not vegan. The only other option is the fried rice side and some of the different kimchi pickles. After placing your order, stop by their condiments bar. They have self serve kimchi and gochujang sauce. They have easy to read labels, showing that the nappa cabbage kimchi has fish in it. BUT the cucumber and daikon kimchi are all good to eat.

I can say that if you come in saying you are vegan, the staff will happily guide you. I asked if their Hotteok (korean donuts) were made with eggs or milk, they guy immediately said that they weren’t vegan. Which means they get lots of vegans coming in.

I also noticed they streamlined their menu (to avoid vegan confusions maybe?). Their original stall location had many different kimchis, krauts, and dressing to be featured in each protein. I remember mixing and matching them, but looking back, some might not of been vegan. This new menu all the condiments are same in a burrito if you get fish or tofu.

Jen eats the tofu burrito which features fried rice inside

So downside? There really aren’t THAT many options for vegans at Mogo. But then again, it isn’t like going to a restaurant with 30 different options and only one vegan option. It is a place that pretty much has few options and combos are mixed around to make lots of options. Plus as a vegan you are getting something super filling and hearty. Salads? You don’t have to get stuck with it.

Curious about visiting the boardwalk stall for tacos on the beach? Due to space they only serve salads and tacos. They serve all six protein options, the only one that’s vegan is tofu.