Purple Potato-Chickpea Cutlet Enchiladas: Recipe Mash-Up

So, as mentioned I’m a bit overwhelmed (in a good way) by foods at the moment. I recently bought Viva Vegan a great Latin vegan cookbook, and really want to cook from it,but also don’t want to stock my fridge any extra ingredients beyond what I already have.

So I was leafing through that, and Veganomicon, and contemplating what I needed to “get rid of” including a large stack of chickpea cutlets, that’d frankly take me years to get through were I to eat them all as is. Then it came to me:

I would combine the Veganomicon enchilada recipe, which calls for a tomato-based chile sauce, with the basic idea for the Viva Vegan enchilada filling, which calls for potatoes and chickpeas, except I’d replace the chickpeas with sliced up chickpea cutlets. That way I’d free up some of the freezer space currently taken up some of my many bags of frozen tomatoes and the chickpea cutlets,  some of the purple potatoes crowding my veggie bin and I’d put the huge $1 bunch of cilantro currently wilting in my fridge to good use. No need to buy anything, except for tortillas—which are in ready supply at the Mexican grocery on my corner. As an added bonus I’d get to play around with the epazote and Mexican oregano I’d picked up at the supermarket last week.
See, I live in what has got to be one of the most solidly Hispanic neighborhoods in the US, outside of maybe Miami. One of of the great things about Viva Vegan is that it gives me a manual for what to do with all those tempting, but slightly unfamiliar spices and ingredients I see at the stores all the time.

Anyway, I invited two friends over for Sunday brunch and served them the enchiladas, paired with a mixed green salad with a dressing similar to that of the Kaleslaw, only I also blended some spinach and mint leaves into it to make it green and cool, then served with lime-mint water on the side. It turned out pretty fucking tasty, if I do say so myself.

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