I’m not sure why I haven’t done a book review on “Thug Kitchen, the Official Cookbook” yet. It’s not really for the faint of heart (curse words) and it tells it like it is. But, the food is out of the this world. So on this particular Sunday, after my longest run since 2011..I had time to cook a great healthy meal for the family and decided to go for it. I had already decided to make some rad Cuban-style beans (see Monday’s post) so that part of this recipe was knocked out. I also had most of the ingredients already, so all I had to do was cook.
*Note: The recipe in this cookbook is vegan but the food in my story/pics is vegetarian as I used non-vegan cheese. Read on…..
Let’s Make Some Enchiladas
I found the recipe for Sweet Potato, Squash and Black Bean Enchiladas on page 155 of the “Thug Kitchen” cookbook and followed it nearly perfectly…with two exceptions. I’ll explain.
First, Enchilada Sauce. Here’s where I made one mistake with the recipe. I love this sauce, but it called for tomato paste and I only had tomato sauce. So I used tomato sauce. Don’t do this. I should have used the tomato paste. The tomato sauce made the overall enchilada sauce too runny and weak, but it was good overall and we still liked it. Good spice level overall and pretty easy to make.
The Enchilada Filling: Umm, the good part. This wasn’t hard to make either, as I had a couple of sweet potato’s here and I had already knocked out the Cuban-style black beans. But in the end I didn’t have a squash handy and I wasn’t going out driving just to pick one up. So, instead I used the same technique the book used by grating with a box grater, but I just used a single zucchini instead. The one single zucchini turned out to the be perfect, providing nearly exactly one cup of veggie after using the box grater. The spice level for the filling was just right and provided a zesty but not screeching hot filling. I also did exactly what the book said and threw my tortillas directly on top of my stove griddle, giving them a quick cook not unlike when they just come out of the tortillarilla. I loved the slight burned smell of the those tortilla’s as I scooped the combined filling into them and put them seam down in our baking dish. 20 Minutes later, take off the foil lid and give them 5 more minutes. At this point, I altered the recipe a bit and threw some Mexican blend cheese on top then put them back in the oven for 5 minutes. Damn, when these came out of the oven, it was definitely a culinary mic drop!
Ok, here’s photos of the process as I went through it:
We cooked on our sailboat, we cooked in our bus as we toured the US and we cook at home. I like to cook and I’m cooking with more diverse ingredients and less meat than ever. Is it easy to find the ingredients I need to cook this way and it’s easy to cook this way?…..YES. Simply put…yes it is. I also find that my energy levels are waaay up and I feel pretty fantastic even on longs runs in extreme heat. Nuff said, hope you’ve enjoyed this post about these great enchiladas.
Wanna read another EASY recipe I’ve made from this cookbook…check out the link below:
HelmsMistress Cooks: Easy Banana Cream Pie
