This is a slightly more conventional take on vegetarian fajitas, made with fake meat, than the one that I posted on Sept. 21 as Fakejitas #1. I can't necessarily decide which one I prefer. This version is made with sweet red and green peppers, with a little kick provided by ground chile chipotle. What may make it unauthentic (are any fajitas unauthentic, let alone those made with soy strips or seitan?) is the use of a tomato-ey sauce, but I find that this is necessary when you don't use real meat. Also, I always serve these with corn tortillas, rather than flour, which would be more authentic for a Northern Mexican or Tex-Mex dish, because they are healthier (lower in fat and higher in calcium) and taste better besides. Heat them up any way you want, but preferably directly over a flame as I direct in Fakejitas #1.
Fakejitas #2
Ingredients
Oil spray
1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil (peanut, corn or canola work well)
2 medium or one large white or yellow onion, cut into wedges
salt
1 large sweet green pepper, seeded and cut into strips
1 large sweet red pepper, seeded and cut into strips
6-8 cloves of garlic, slices
8 -12 ounces fake meat strips (chicken or beef flavored seitan, or fake steak soy strips like Morningstar farms meal starter or Lightlife steak strips)
1 teaspoon - 1 tablespoon Bragg's aminos
1 teaspoon to one tablespoon olive oil
28 ounce can diced tomatoes, or whole tomatoes diced, save juice (Muir Glen fire-roasted tomatoes will add a nice smokey flavor)
1 teaspoon ground chili chipotle
To serve
Corn tortillas (about 3 or 4 per serving)
Sour cream
Salsa (see recipe below; don't even think of using jarred salsa)
Sliced avocado
Method
Spray a large nonstick skillet with oil spray.
Heat 1 teaspoon to one tablespoon of the vegetable oil in the skillet on high, add onions, salt lighly, and stir fry until they begin to soften.
Add peppers and continue to stir fry until they are cooked but not too soft. The vegetables will take 10 minutes or less total.
Add 2 cloves of sliced garlic and stir fry some more. Add one teaspoon Bragg's if you are using.
Remove vegetables to a serving dish.
Add a bit more oil to the skillet, heat, and add the fake meat, shredding any large pieces if necessary and stir fry until seared, about 3-5 minutes.
Add 2 more cloves sliced garlic, stir a bit, and add another teaspoon or two of Bragg's. Stir until absorbed and remove to the dish with the vegetables.
Heat the olive oil in the skillet, add the remaining sliced garlic, saute until soft but not brown, about one minute, and add the diced tomatoes, their juice, and the chipotle. Cook on high until the sauce is thick, about 10 minutes.
Return veggies and fake meat to the skillet and stir fry until combined. Taste for salt and add more if needed. It should be dry rather than soupy.
Serves four with tortillas, sour cream, salsa and avocado.
An idea with leftovers: Beat about 4 eggs, mix with the leftovers, and cook in a nonstick skillet into a pancake-style omelet (actually a Spanish tortilla, but that is too confusing) with a little oil until done. Broil to cook the top.
Please forgive the awful pun, but since I use fake meat strips I thought it was appropriate. Though Mexicans would probably refer to this as ropa vieja (old rags) and make it with boiled shredded beef, it is not far from what Americans call fajitas. I make it with fake meat, either Lightlife Smartstrips Steak-style strips, or Morningstar farms frozen steak strips. They are far lower in calories, and you can still have sour cream and do no damage in terms of either cholesterol or kashrut. God forgive me, I never thought I would say this, but I have become rather fond of fake meat.
This dish really requires poblano chilies. Their flavor is deep, rich and unique, it doesn't take long to roast and peel them, and the dish would not be the same without them. When I get around to it, I will post another version of fakejitas which is more generic and tomato-y and acceptable to use regular sweet peppers. If you must, you can use canned green chilies here, but the poblanos are worth the minimal extra effort.
Fakejitas (vegetarian Mexican ropa vieja)
Ingredients
Oil spray
2 poblano peppers
Peanut oil (between 1 and 2 tablespoons, depending on your preference)
6-10 ounces vegetarian steak strips
1 medium white onion, cut in half and sliced about 1/4 inch thick (the size of a peach; red or yellow is acceptable if you cant find white)
salt and pepper
2 cloves garlic peeled and sliced
1 teaspoon Bragg's aminos (optional but adds a lot of umami flavor)
2 eggs, beaten lightly with a pinch of salt
To serve
Corn tortillas (this amount makes 6-8 soft tacos and serves 2-3, see below on reheating)
Sour cream
Salsa (see recipe below; don't even think of using jarred salsa)
Sliced avocado
Method
To prepare the poblanos, spray them with the oil spray or rub them lightly with oil. Stick them over a high gas flame on your stove (if you have an electric stove, get a gas one) and turn them around with tongs until they are blackened all over, for between 5 and 10 minutes. Watch carefully so that they don't burn. When well blackened, remove them and either wrap them in paper towel or put them in a paper bag and set them aside until they cool. They will steam a bit while they cool and the skin will loosen.
Remove the blackened skin with your fingers. (You may want to wear gloves or use paper towels if your skin is very sensitive or you are in the habit or rubbing sensitive body parts like your eyes. Poblanos are only mildly hot, but they can tingle.) Run under water if necessary and remove as much skin as you can. Cut open the pepper, remove the stem, ribs and seeds, and cut into 1/4 inch vertical strips. These are called rajas.
Spray a medium nonstick skillet with oil spray, heat on high, add a bit of oil and add the fake steak. Stir fry a few minutes until browned and remove to a serving bowl.
Add a bit more oil to the skillet and add the onions, salt lightly, and saute on high without browning until they being to soften.
Add rajas and cook about 3 minutes more.
Add the garlic and cook for another minute.
Add the fake steak, the Bragg's and heat through. Taste for salt -- it probably won't need any more.
If you are using the eggs, push the mixture over to one side of the skillet, add the beaten eggs, and cook until almost done. Break it up with a spatula and mix into the other stuff.
Put in a bowl and serve.
To eat, smear a little sour cream on a warm tortilla, add some of the fakejitas, a slice of avocado, salsa, and wrap it up and eat it.
Reheating corn tortillas: Turn on a gas burner and turn to medium low. Add a tortilla, heat for about 30 seconds, adjusting the heat so that it does not burn, and put another tortilla directly on top of it. Flip it over (using tongs, not your fingers!) so that the cold tortilla is over the flame, and heat for another 30 seconds. Add another cold tortilla on top, flip over, and repeat for up to a dozen tortillas. Wrap the tortillas in a clean dishtowel and serve as soon as possible. I have tried many methods and like this one the best. There is a satisfying, elemental quality to this technique, and the slight char on the tortillas adds much more flavor than a sojourn in the microwave.
Salsa: I never understood why people buy jarred salsa when all you need to make salsa mexicana is a few ingredients and a sharp knife. Mix about 1/4 of a medium white or red onion, finely chopped, with a smallish chopped tomato, a chopped serrano or jalapeno chili (remove the seeds if you want it less hot), and a handful of chopped fresh cilantro and some salt. Let it sit for a few minutes, and add a tablespoon of water if you want it more liquid. That's it.
I know that this may sound gross, but it isn't. As I explained in an earlier posting on vegetarian chili, I have become out of both choice and necessity a devote of fake meat.
My niece was coming over for Friday night dinner, and made a special request of a recipe that had just appeared in Mark Bittman's minimalist column: fried chickpeas with chorizo and spinach. For the original recipe, see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/dining/24minirex.html?ref=dining . But, since she is a vegetarian, and I don't eat pork anymore, some experimentation was called for. Since the vegetarian sausage is lacking in both spice and fat and therefore much flavor, some further doctoring was needed in the form of smoked Spanish paprika (pimenton), black pepper and garlic, which made up for some of the flavors that would be found in the original chorizo. Here is what we did with it:
Chickpeas with vegetarian chorizo
Ingredients
* olive oil
* 2 vegetarian chorizos (I used Lifetime brand)
* 2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, as dry as possible (about half a pound cooked, or the contents of a 28 ounce can)
* 5 cloves chopped garlic
* 1 chopped shallot or 1/4 cup chopped onion
* 1 tablespoon sweet smoked Spanish paprika
* Salt and black pepper
* 1/2 pound spinach
* 1/4 cup sherry
* 1 to 2 cups bread crumbs.
Method
1. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large nonstick skillet. Quarter, then slice the chorizo and fry on medium heat until crisp. This takes 5 or 10 minutes depending on how crisp you like it. Remove to a plate.
2. Add 2-3 more tablespoons of oil to the skillet, and the chickpeas, dried well, and fry over medium high heat until they are brown and crisp a bit, about 10 minutes.
3. Push the chickpeas to the side, add a bit of oil, and 3cloves of chopped garlic and the onion or shallot. When they are soft, add the smoked paprika and about 10 grinds of black pepper. Cook on low until the paprika loses some of its raw aroma, and then incorporate into the chickpeas. Mix in the chorizo.
4. Add another tablespoon of oil to the pan then add the garlic and saute on medium for under a minute.
5. Add spinach and sherry and stir fry until wilted.
6. Remove the spinach to a cutting board and chop coarsely (much easier than wrestling with it when it is raw).
7. Combine chick peas, chorizo, and spinach in a thin layer in a baking dish, sprinkle with bread crumbs and drizzle with some more olive oil or spray with some olive oil spray.
8. Put the dish under the broiler for about 5 minutes to brown.
Since I cooked my own chickpeas, and I had some chorizo left over as well, I made the following dish for lunch during the week. The ingredients are very similar but the effect is completely different. Much easier and less elegant, but no less delicious.
Chickpea stew with vegetarian chorizos and tomato sauce
Ingredients
* olive oil
* 2 vegetarian chorizos (I used Lifetime brand)
* 2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, as dry as possibe (about half a pound cooked, or the contents of a 28 ounce can)
* 5 cloves chopped garlic
* 1 chopped shallot or 1/4 cup chopped onion
* 1 tablespoon sweet smoked Spanish paprika
* Salt and black pepper
* 15 ounce can chopped or crushed tomatoes (I like del Valle from Italian cherry tomatoes, but Muir Glen fire roasted would accentuate the smokiness of the paprika).
Method
1. Slice or dice the chorizo and saute on medium heat in one tablespoon olive oil in a nonstick skillet for about 5 or 10 minutes. Remove to a plate.
2. Add garlic and onions to the skillet with 1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil and saute until soft but not burned. Add paprika, salt and pepper and saute a bit longer to remove the raw smell.
3. Add the tomatoes and cook on high for 5 to 10 minutes until the oil begins to separate.
4. Mix in the chickpeas and chorizo and cook 5 more minutes until heated through. If it looks to dry, add water or chickpea cooking liquid (only if you make your own, not from the can).
5. Serve over rice.
Canned or dried chickpeas: There is really no comparison, and cooking your own chickpeas takes minimal effort. Wash them, soak them over night (or for at least 8 hours at any time of day; as I have said before they are legumes and not phantoms and there is nothing magical about soaking them at night), then rinse and simmer in fresh water until tender to your taste, about 35-50 minutes, depending on the age of the legumes and on your taste. Salt the water about 5 minutes before they are done. You can actually use the water you cook the chickpeas in, unlike the gross slimy liquid from the can. However, life is short, planning in advance doesn't always work, and canned chickpeas are a real convenience, even if my daughter won't eat them.
Menu ideas: either of these dishes, especially the second one, would make a great component of a vegetarian Spanish meal. Try it with spinach or other greens sauteed with pine nuts and raisins, tortilla espagnole (a frittatta like omelet with potatoes) and a tossed salad. Gazpacho or a hot garlic soup with bread and poached eggs would be a good first course.
If you don't want to deal with my long intro, skip down a ways to the recipe for vegetarian chili. But it will be your loss.
After we dropped Maya off at Beloit College in Wisconsin in August 2005, we headed for the Wisconsin Dells. This is a beautiful natural area that in recent decades has become the indoor-outdoor all-season water park capital of North America, and one of the schlockiest resorts anywhere. Think Lake George, only many times more so. We did this in part out of a sense of parental obligation. The time before she left for college (ok, let's say the previous 18 years) were very intensively about Maya. So we thought that at least some of the summer vacation should be about Harry too, and the Dells seemed like a dream come true for a 13-year old.
This is not to say that the Dells do not have their virtues. The water parks are fun and doubly so if you are stuck in the Upper Midwest in January and can splash around indoors. And there is the Hades roller coaster at the Mount Olympus water and theme park. (The theme is sort of Greek as in diner, rather than as in mythology.) But Hades was amazing. It is an old-fashioned wooden coaster and the first, incredibly high and steep drop is into the gaping mouth of hell, after which you find yourself racing and turning around in the dark, under the parking lot -- sheer terror and pure fun. However, this is not the kind of resort you expect to go to for the food, most of which consists of the usual chains and fast food restaurants (not that there is anything wrong with Culver's custard and fried cheese curds, as separate courses, but that is another matter).
However, we did happen on an excellent vegetarian restaurant called The Cheese Factory which was as out of place in this town as a Cossack in a Sukkah. It was right down the road from our resort hotel, the Kalahari (a desert themed water park?), so we tried it . Usually the vegetarian food that we go for is of the ethnic or locavore vegetable variety, but this place is nothing of the sort. It specialized in fake meat : omelets with vegetarian ham and pancakes with soy bacon for breakfast; vegetarian Reuben sandwiches (with seitan pastrami) and things like that for lunch; and tofu strogonoff, textured soy protein meatballs, and seitan chicken parmiggiano for dinner. It seemed to be run by some kind of Christian cult (growing up Jewish in Queens, any form of Christianity other than Catholicism was some sort of cult, but this was on a whole other level). The waitresses dressed "prairie-style" like Nicky and the polygamous sister wives from the compound on Big Love, and they smiled all the time all had names like Patience, Purity and Charity. It all sounds revolting, but the food was good and it converted me into of a devote of fake-meat. At this stage in my gastro-spiritual development, it is very convenient to be able to enjoy soy bacon on a grilled cheese sandwich, "fake-jitas" (fajitas made of soy or wheat gluten beef strips) that you can have with sour cream and cheese, and not to mention vegetarian chili with all the fixings including cheese and sour cream.
The following recipe is very liberally adapted from The Cheese Factory Restaurant Cookbook, on sale at the restaurant. It marks a departure for me in a few ways. It is much less stream of consciousness than my other recipes. As I made it this afternoon (special request of Maya, Andrew, Sarah and Helen), I wrote down the ingredients and what I did with them at every stage. Also, I am presenting this in more conventional style, with the ingredients first and then the procedure. It makes an enormous quantity. I suggest you set aside half without the beans and final seasonings and freeze it. Then add the beans and seasonings to what is left in the pot, which will serve 8-10 in any case. It is the kind of dish that it pays to make in quantity. For those to whom this matters, it is pareve (without the accompaniments of course) so you can use it in lots of interesting ways.
Vegetarian Chili
Ingredients
4 cups Textured Soy Protein (TSP) or Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP), about 1 pound
4-6 tablespoons ground Ancho pepper (you can substitute a little ground pasilla or mulato and cut down on the chipotle if you can find them)
2 28 ounce cans crushed or diced tomatoes (I use Muir Glen fire roasted)
6 ounces tomato paste
1-2 tablespoons of salt
4 cups water
28 ounce can red beans (I prefer small red beans to kidney beans)
28 ounce can black beans
2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
4 teaspoons roasted ground cumin (you can probably substitute garam masala here, but I would cut the quantity to 2 teaspoons)
Accompaniments (any or all)
sour cream
chopped white onion
chopped cilantro
chopped green chili
white or brown rice or elbow macaroni
corn bread
shredded cheddar cheese
hot sauces
avocado cubes
toasted tortilla strips (take 12 tortillas, cut in half, cut into 1/4 inch ribbons, put on a baking sheet sprayed with vegetable oil spray, spray a little more, and bake in a 300 degree oven for 30 -45 minutes. They should be crisp but not burned. Guard these well until you serve them.)
Procedure
Put 1 tablespoon oil in a very large non stick skillet. Add the TVP or TSP and toast on medium low heat, stirring occasionally, until it turns several shades darker. I aim for the shade of caramel, you can try to darker but be careful not to burn.
Add the bullion, stir, and set aside until ready.
In a large (5-6 quart) pot, heat the remaining oil, add the onion, salt lightly, and saute on medium until soft but not brown.
Add the carrots, celery, garlic, and peppers. You can prepare these while you are sauteing and add each to the pot when done. Saute until soft.
Add all the spices (coriander through Ancho), and saute a few minutes on low until fragrant being careful not to burn them.
Add the tomatoes, paste, and salt. Stir well and simmer about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the soaked TVP/TSP stir well, and add up to 4 cups additional water.
Simmer for about 1/2 hour stirring occasionally and being careful not to burn it.
Take half of the chili, and set aside to freeze.
Drain the beans, rinse very well, and add to the chili and cook another 15 minutes or more until well heated through.
Add the cocoa and roasted cumin and serve with any accompaniments you would like.
Notes
The recipe sounds longer and harder than it is. It probably takes a 90 minutes beginning to end, not all of it active, and it is well worth the effort. Besides, you will have lots of dinners in the freezer.
Ceylon Cinnamon is true cinnamon and is used in Mexican cooking and available in good spice stores and as canela where Mexican ingredients are sold. What we generally call cinnamon is really cassia, which has a different flavor and should be used much more sparingly.
It doesn't matter whether you use Textured Soy Protein or Textured Vegetable Protein, either form of fake meat will do. They are yellowish tan in color and look sort of like a cross between coarse bread crumbs, corn flakes, and some kind of animal feed. Since most ground beef makes no noticeable contribution to the flavor of the dishes in which it is used, and since this is so vigorously seasoned, you can use TSP or TVP in confidence. They are healthier and more economical than ground meat, and pareve. Especially when seasoned with pareve bullion, it adds a meaty texture and flavor missing from bean or vegetable based vegetarian chili. I use Bob's Red Mill brand, which also happens to be heckshered.
Because I usually make this in large quantities, and for crowds I tend to make it on the mild side, and people can add chopped chile or hot sauce if they want. I usually use the minimum amount of chile powder in the recipe, but you can use the max or even more if you know who will be eating it.
It you tire of chile by itself, try chile dogs, chili veggie burgers, or chili cheese omelets.
I am a program officer at a small foundation. I started this blog a few years ago when I was rather underemployed, and found it so therapeutic that I have continued it now that I have less time on my hands. In this picture, I am carrying a basket of squash and Tuscan black kale, and eating a road lily (very edible and tasty).
