Tag Archives: The Simple Veganista

Blog Recipe Round Up: Tomatillos

November 2, 2017

My goodness it has been a really long time since I’ve done one of these! I always try and write a review with any recipe I try online, make a category and hope they build up enough to be it’s own post. But that doesn’t always happen. Luckily my CSA forces me to try and figure out what to do with all these tomatillos so this post has been in the works for TWO YEARS!

Why did this take so long? Well I wanted to feature recipes that weren’t just salsa verde. I mean I made my own salsa morado, but I mean- it is just a salsa verde XD So I give you quite a round up! I hope you enjoy it, and there is even a sweet treat as well!

Roasted Tomatillo Hummus

I am frequent reader of Fragrant Vanilla Cake and saw this recipe using tomatillos in hummus. I knew I had to give it a try since it is an interesting way to eat the fruit. The recipe is pretty easy, roast tomatillos, blend with the hummus ingredients, serve. I have to admit this is a delicious and tangy hummus. Very different than what most people are use to for their hummus. I could picture myself just eating it as a dip with chips.

But I used it mostly in wraps with breaded green tomatoes, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and avocados. But I could use it in sandwiches, and a bunch of other ways. What makes this hummus so nice is that it is sweet and tangy but has lots of protein, so you get food that is nutritionally sustainable and filling.

Bottom Line: Quick and Easy, great for lunches.

Black Bean, Tomatillo, and Corn Soup

This is pushing the definition soup. It is more like a stew since it is so thick. It is indeed tasty, but I think there should be a little more broth to make it by definition a soup. Overall the dish is super healthy and full of vegetables and fiber. I think the longest part is getting all the vegetables prepared, especially since it calls for fresh corn. Because of this I think I would double the recipe next time so I could have leftovers to eat.

I also would add more tomatillos. Yes, you can taste them in the dish, but I wish there would of been more. I mean if you have tomatillos in the title, I better be tasting them. I think I ended up using more tomatoes in the soup than tomatillos! Aside from that gripe- I would give the dish a thumbs up on making it again.

Bottom Line: Easy and healthy soup. Recommend doubling the recipe for leftovers and adding more tomatillos.

Vegan Enchilada Suizas

I think what I’ve learned about these recipes is that maybe my tomatillos from my CSA are smaller than fresh tomatillos from the supermarket. So I doubled the amount of tomatillos in the sauce.

Looking at the recipe I felt like I probably should have a little more veggies in there, so I took away some of the beans, and added some sauteed sweet peppers. Also I didn’t use the suggested hot peppers in the sauce or any added salt since I was going to feed it to a 10 month old. Even without the salt, the dish carried itself quite well, but something to keep in mind with the spice levels.

Overall I loved the dish. I will make it again since it is easy to make and easy to prep ahead of time. I blended the sauce in the morning while my blender was dirty from smoothies. I set aside the sauce, so when it came to dinner time I just cooked the sauce, and put together the enchiladas.

My biggest complaint is that she doesn’t specify which sized tortilla wraps. I have “taco” and “burrito” sizes wraps, and I didn’t know which size, so I just made four big enchiladas as appose to six. Not the end of the world, but I can’t be the only one out there that didn’t grow up on enchiladas.

Bottom Line: Baby Approved, Just would make more sauce

White Bean Tomatillo Soup

This soup is much more “tomatillo-y” compared to the black bean recipe. This one uses a lot of beans and a lot of tomatillos. This is a simple soup that lets you enjoy the taste of tomatillos. Aside from cooking dried beans, the recipe doesn’t take long to make. All I did was soak the beans overnight, cooked them in the morning, then made the short 30 minute recipe. Though you could soak the beans in the morning and cook the soup for longer if you have the time to wait.

My only complaint is that she calls for 4 cups broth, 2 cups water. I feel like just sticking with 6 cups broth/stock would give a fuller flavored soup. Maybe it is to save people money? Most stocks are sold in 4 cup containers. Who knows. I didn’t read the 2 cups water so at first I had a very thick soup. Oops. But I really liked the recipe. Full of flavor, simple, and easy peasy.

Bottom Line: Super healthy and yummy soup. Would use all 6 cups of stock instead of part water.

Tomatillo Green Apple Sorbet

Sometimes recipes are so simple I find a hard time with them! Enter this recipe for a Green Apple and Tomatillo Sorbet. First what I ended up with was delicious, but there was a lot of last minute changes that I had to make.

The first change I had to make was that the portions on the site didn’t add up for me. It should I should of had about 2 1/2 cups by the end of the cooking process, but I had more like 1 3/4 of a cup. Eek! I quickly doubled the apple and tomatillo, started to cook them again, and got about the right amount. Blended it up and popped it in the fridge. Then when I put the sorbet in the ice cream maker, there didn’t seem to be much. This is something that annoys me with ice cream recipes. It takes a lot of work to make ice cream, and making just enough for two servings is a pain. So I quickly dumped some extra coconut milk into the ice cream maker.

The end result? A SUPER delicious recipe. Since I probably cooked the apples too much, I got a tart but semi caramel-like sorbet. The best part is that the ice cream kept really soft in the freezer, one of my first times doing so! I think adding the coconut milk in the end helped with the tartness. If I make this again, I will totally make some changes to the recipe, and you might find a similar recipe on the blog next year.

Bottom Line: Great inspiration. Overall great results, not sure if I will make this recipe 100% exactly the same

Chunky Tomatillo Tostadas

I took some liberties to switch this recipe up a little. Yeah, I got a little lazy in the tostadas part and was starving. So these got transformed into tacos. Oh well. I tried to keep the toppings in the spirit of the original post and let’s face it, a corn shelled taco isn’t too different from a tostadas. Personally the dish probably would of worked best in tostadas form, so keep that in mind.

Naturally my main complaint is that recipe calls for x amount of tomatillos, not going by poundage. I added more to the recipe since the tomatillos picked from my CSA were a little smaller than most commercial grocery stores. Aside from the resulting faster cooking time, everything worked out great! The whole recipe will probably take an hour from beginning to end but is very easy to get the prep work done, and has a lot of hands off time.

I really love how there were bursts of tomatillo flavors hidden in the pinto beans. I think there should be a little bit more tomatillo to bean ratio, but aside from that it is a great mix. As mentioned I made tacos instead and paired them with lettuce, avocado and tomato (no sour cream mix.) I will be adding this to my rotation during the next tomatillo season at my CSA

Bottom Line: Takes some time, but overall very easy and hands off.

Posted by Jennifer in Food Review, Reviews Tags: Fragrant Vanilla Cake, Macheesmo, rabbit and wolves, recipe roundup, The Simple Veganista, the wimpy vegetarian, tomatillo, tomatillos, wives with knives

3 comments

Blog Recipe Round Up: Chickpeas

February 25, 2015

There aren’t many vegan’s who don’t love chickpeas. They are so versatile and they even have been growing in popularity in their flour form- besan. But this chickpea round-up is all about chickpeas in their cooked bean form. We tried to give lots of options here, pizza, curry, sandwich, salad, and even blondies!

This grouping I am happy to report yummy findings with very different flavor profiles! So I recommend reading all these reviews and pick at least one to cook at home. We got a wide range of styles so you can’t say there isn’t anything you would like.

Curried Chickpea Salad

I made this recipe on a whim – I wanted to try something new in the kitchen and something that was easy and flexible. I tend to look at a recipe and will tailor it to my liking by either adding a vegetable or spice if I think it’ll improve upon itself. This recipe only really asked for chickpeas, carrots, onions and the home-made curry sauce, but I added craisins to balance out the savoriness and add a little bit of sweet to it and the result was delicious! And it was nice because I was able to make enough to last me throughout the week for meals at work. It’s a great light dish or summer dish to bring to barbeques as well, I would think.

Bottom Line: Good recipe, will make again, would recommend.

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Chickpea Cookie Bars

Funny thing is when I picked this recipe I had my doubts from the photos alone. The outside of the bar looks so nice and crunchy but the insides a little undercooked. My first instinct was to spread the batter out, but figured I would follow the recipe fairly strictly and kept with the loaf pan.

The dough was promising, in it’s raw state it was sweet and yummy with a little hint of chickpea. I poured the batter into the pan and baked for a full hour. The end result for the first day is alright. The outside was so crunchy compared to the inside that it was hard to cut into squares. But once the bars sat in a container for a day, they are a lot more paletable. I think I still might try and bake these in a larger more spread out pan next time.

Bottom Line: Not bad for a dessert chickpea bar.

Roasted Cauliflower, Chickpea + Quinoa Salad with Jalapeno Lime Dressing

I made this dish thinking about my lunches for the week. I figured it would make two lunches, and it would be great. Not really. The dish was alright, and I had two things cross my mind. One was that the dish would of tasted better when the chickpea and cauliflower came fresh out of the oven. Then my second thought was that the the dressing was lacking. So if I would do this differently I would make this as a main dinner dish, and double the dressing.

Bottom Line: Yummy, best eat right away, needs more dressing

Crowd Pleasing Vegan Caesar Salad

I made this dish a few times for family get togethers for this Christmas season. I can safely say it impressed everyone, vegans and omnivores alike. The dressing is creamy, garlicky, and salty. The crunchy chickpea croutons were different and added a unique twist to the dish.

There are only one major “issue” which can be a plus (depending how you view it). The portions are HUGE! So much that I had a hard time tossing the greens in the dressing. This could be problematic if you are making this dish for yourself, but perfect when serving a large party.

But most/all aspects can be prepared a day before hand, so if you are bringing the salad to dinner you don’t have to sweat about cooking a dish while putting your hair up. I did have trouble storing the chickpeas, and they softened after a day. So if you are going to do something the day of, I would suggest roasting the chickpeas first thing that morning.

Bottom Line: Amazing, but large portions

Buffalo Chickpea Ranch Pizza

This pizza can be easy to make, if you prep a few things in advance. For example I prepped the ranch dressing the morning of so I wouldn’t have to clean the blender again at night. Aside from that everything is easy to chop, coat, etc. The downside is the dough. I was not impressed by it. I got a tough and dense dough that I didn’t really like. And her recipe calls for pre-baking the dough creating too crunchy of a crust, and I found it broke in odd places.

BUT ignoring the crust, this dish was awesome. My husband had doubts as I spread such a small layer of sauce on the crust. But he was asking for more. I think this dish would probably find it’s way as a standard pizza in this household since it is so easy to make.

Bottom Line: Awesome, but I would use a different dough

Butternut Squash, Kale, and Chickpea Massaman Curry

This is a super easy dish to make, especially if you have the massaman curry already made. It takes about 30 minutes total and it is super filling. I jazzed the recipe up a little and served it over couscous instead of rice, but both would taste great. The only downside is that the dish largely relies on the curry paste of choice, so if you curry sucks, the dish will suck.

But the recipe given to make your own massaman curry at home was pretty good. I used that recipe to a t, with two exceptions, I didn’t add any shallots and I used pre-ground chili powder. The curry was awesome but sadly doesn’t freeze in solid cubes. Instead it is still soft in the freezer. Actually I am not sure if this is a bad or good thing.

Bottom Line: Quick to make.

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Posted by Jennifer in Reviews Tags: chickpeas, connoisseurus veg, My Darling Lemon Tyme, oh she glows, recipe roundup, the honor system, The Simple Veganista, vegan yak attack

2 comments

Curried Chickpea Salad

November 13, 2014

Say what you will, but I find that there is almost something artistic about a messy work space in the kitchen.

I have been so bored with food recently…and that’s saying a lot! I have wanted to try out new recipes but my budget has been tight and I have had so much going on that I haven’t had the time to do anything, or at least it’s felt that way. Yesterday I buckled down and decided that no matter what – I was going to make at least ONE new thing to eat! I have gotten my body in the habit of trying to eat (or at least ingest) something green once a day and when I don’t get to do that it makes me grumpy. While there wasn’t too much green in the foods I ate yesterday I at least know that what I made was vegan/vegetarian recipes AND they were on the healthier side!

I found this recipe on Pinterest (originally from The Simple Veganista) and tweaked it a bit. I had been eyeing the recipe for a while and decided that yesterday was finally the day to try it out! I always tend to think of even the simplest recipes as time consuming, mostly because of all the chopping they would involve (I tend to add more vegetables or more of a vegetable even if it isn’t called for), and let me tell you…this is SO SIMPLE. There are only 3 ingredients that need chopping – if that even, and the curry sauce is really easy to make as well.

I am so excited because I have even more for the rest of the week! Can you say LUNCH?

The only ingredients that were listed in Julie’s recipe were chickpeas, carrots, scallions, raisins and cashews. I obviously included the chickpeas and carrots, but replaced the scallions for the sweet onion that I already had in the kitchen and replaced the raisins with dried cranberries (or “craisins” if you will). I am not a huge fan of raisins and knew that these would give the right sweetness that Julie used the raisins for in her recipe. I also stuck with cashews because they are delicious. I also added some chopped up radish for an extra crunch and added flavor. Radishes are vegetables that I love but I never seem to use them in recipes that I end up making at home.

When I threw all of the ingredients for the curry sauce (curry powder, garlic powder, a pinch of salt, lemon juice and hummus) together it all seemed a bit too curry-ish, which I find is hard to accomplish most times. It may have been the hummus I used, I usually like Sabra as my go-to hummus, but this time I had just used the leftover Trader Joe’s (surprise surprise) hummus I had in the refrigerator. The texture was a bit off and it seemed quite salty, so I read Julia’s notes and she mentioned adding maple syrup or any liquid sweetener to take that edge off. After I added a smidge of my Trader Joe’s Maple Agave Syrup is was PERFECT. I put the salad on bread, made it into a sandwich and brought it to work. It’s a wee-bit messy because chickpeas are big and round**, but if that’s the only thing I had to complain about then I would say it all worked out pretty well.

I will definitely be making this dish again and I am so excited to be keeping up with The Simple Veganista! I always love discovering new blogs and it’s equally as lovely to find out that the recipes they post are delicious. I recommend this for easy lunches, and the recipe makes a decent amount so you’ll have it for a few people or a few days!

** QUICK NOTE FROM JEN: I’ve made some chickpea salads in my day. I recommend mashing them quickly before stirring in all the veggies and such. Just get a few crushes to help them stay together in a sandwich.

Posted by Alexa in Food Review Tags: carrots, cashews, chickpea curry salad, chickpeas, craisins, cranberries, curry, pinterest, radish, sweet onion, The Simple Veganista, vegan, vegetarian