Vegan MoFo day 14 - sharing some chilli verde with a non-vegan

I had planned to do something really clever today and veganise a chocolate prune torte that a friend of mine had been aiming to make allergen free. But, after a very busy weekend, I just couldn't find time or energy to make the delicious cake I had been dreaming up.

So, instead, I've got something I made recently and shared with my favourite non-vegan, Mr Flicking the Vs.

Mr FtVs is a veggie, but because I do most of the cooking in our house, he's been subjected to both the best and worst vegan recipes I make. He's also the poor sod that gets sent out to find the single weird ingredient that a dish needs ("go on, there must be barberries in south London somewhere") and also has now built up an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the places in London where you can get quality vegan cake with a one-mile radius. From Camden to Catford, he can tell you where sponge and icing lurks.

Here's one of the more successful recipes I cooked up for him - chilli verde.

I'd never heard of, let alone tried, chilli verde until I bought some fresh tomatillos on a whim. Before buying that fateful box, I'd only tried tinned tomatillos, and always made green pumpkin seed mole from Veganomicon with them.

But with a box of freshies in my hand, I hit my preferred internet search engine to work out what to do with them. The answer, it turned out, was vegan chilli verde. In the original, it's Tex-Mex pork stew in tomatillos; in my version, the tomatillo sauce is still there, but the protein punch comes from beans and tofu for a cruelty-free chilli. It may be thoroughly inauthentic, but it tasted good.

Vegan chilli verde

Ingredients
One white onion, finely diced
One stick celery, thinly sliced
One green chilli, finely diced
One tablespoon cumin seeds, dry roasted until fragrant, then ground
One teaspoon dried oregano
One dessertspoon flour
250g fresh tomatillos, roasted at 200C until blackened
One box of marinated tofu pieces eg Cauldron's
One tin of butter beans, drained
Vegetable stock

How you do it
Sweat the onion, chilli, and celery in oil until soft.
In the meantime, puree the blackened tomatillos with a little stock to make a puree.
Add the oregano and cumin powder to the onion mixture, and cook for a minute.
Add the flour and cook for a further minute, stirring to prevent it burning.
Add the tomatillo puree and stir until combined, diluting a little with more stock until you have a thick sauce.
Add in the tofu and butter beans, adding more stock a little at a time, until everything is covered with a thick sauce.
Leave to cook for five or ten minutes, and serve with tortillas.


Comments

  1. Ooh I really hope we get to see the chocolate prune torte at some point. I have a recipe that I used to make and adore pre-vegan from a book called Body Foods for Women by Jane Clarke. I really want to make a vegan version but haven't been sure where to start. I'm thinking of using you rhubarb and custard tart from the other day for inspiration.

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  2. I have barberries that I bought randomly because I didn't know what they were, so tart! I haven't done anything traditional with them just throw them on salads once and a while. This sounds like a really good protein bowl, I could have bought tomatillos at the farmers market last Saturday, now I wish I did!

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  3. Wonderful dish and post! I LOVE all the sharing that is going on in everyone's post today!

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  4. The chili verde looks awesome! How wonderful that your veggie husband is willing to eat vegan!

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  5. Snap, Joey - I have made a vegan Verde Chilli too, but its completely and I mean completely different to yours. I will share it later during Vegan Mofo, but I am liking your version lots and the buttery butterbeans, tofu an ingredient underused in my kitchen. I grew tomatillo's once, but they are hard to find fresh and even tinned. As you may know I am a vegetarian, so am with your mr flicking the v's here - this vegan mofo prompt is a bit of a challenge for me, as I am the non- vegan here, duh.

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  6. BandMan (my partner) suffers the same last minute ingredient haul. I'm always like "you know what would make this dish better? X-ingredient!" And he's so sweet he always runs out and grabs it. Course i pay him in food sooooo

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  7. Love the look of that chilli verde, the mister is such a sweetie to be running around after last minute ingredients. :-)

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