Simple, Delicious, and Vegan!

After two posts about sugary treats (which are awesome, don't get me wrong) I'm going to do a quick post about some healthy, yummy fare I cooked up last night. Like I said in my very first post, I want to include some of the simple stuff I make most nights of the week as well as represent some tasty vegan options. Between the ages of 16 and 19, I was vegetarian and this also happened to be when I learned to cook. So, a lot of what I cook is veg by default. I have honed my meat cooking skills a bit over the last couple of years but it's still sort of my automatic to make stuff with veggies and beans and the like. Last night, I needed to cook for a friend who is vegan and I was so grateful to have the ability to make flavorful meals without animal products because, like I've mentioned ad nauseum since starting this blog, cooking for the people I love is A-number one important to me.

I did a quick mental inventory of what I had in my fridge and my pantry and came up with squash from my garden, homemade canned salsa I'd dug out of the pantry, and burrito shells. The only beans I had were dried black beans, not an option since you really gotta plan ahead to use those babies, so I decided to stop by the grocery and grab some pintos in a can and onion, since I'd used the last of that at some point last week. I've become quite fond of shredding vegetables to cook them. It's a great way to make them meltingly tender and if you slice an onion really thin and saute them together with olive oil, salt, pepper and whatever spices seem appropriate, it becomes this perfect amalgamation of flavor. In my mind, there are two distinct ways to do burritos (and other westernized forms of latin food). There's the version where all the ingredients have these nice crisp boundaries that keep the integrity of their own flavor while also pairing well with other ingredients. My fave of this variety is black beans, lightly spiced, with pineapple, pico de gallo, roasted sweet potatoes, and either blanched kale or lettuce. (I highly recommend this if you need fiber in your diet. Just don't eat it the night before a long run ;) Last night, though, we needed the other version where everything's a bit mushy and all the ingredients meld together so you have a little pocket of belly-warming goodness. Below is the recipe for what I came up with. It really came together nicely and I'm stoked that there are a tiny bit of leftovers that I'll be eating with tortilla chips for lunch today.

Shredded Squash and Pinto Bean Burritos

Ingredients:
2 medium size yellow squash
1 small or half of a large red onion
1 80z (I think, whatever the normal size is) Pinto Beans
2 cloves garlic
2 T Olive Oil
1 t. ground cumin
1 t. chili powder
lettuce (whatever variety floats your boat)
salsa
whatever other fixins you're into for burritos

Method:

1. Heat 1 T of olive oil in a skillet. Slice your onion very thin and shred the squash with a grater. Once the oilve oil is warm, throw in the onion and sautee it until it starts to turn transluscent. Then, add the squash and stir to coat with the oil. You may need to add a little more oil.

2. Once the squash has been cooking for a minute or so, stir in 1/2 t. of cumin and a heaping 1/2 t. of chili powder. Also, salt and pepper to taste. Stir to combine the spices well. Remember to stir it occasionally for even cooking and to prevent sticking.

3. Drain the pinto beans and put them in a sauce pan with about a tablespoon, maybe a little less, of olive oil. Throw in two small or one large clove of minced or crushed garlic, 1/2 t. cumin and another heaping 1/2 t. of chili powder as well as salt and pepper to taste and stir to combine. The trick is to spice the beans and squash equally and not too strongly since they'll all end up together in the end. We also want to avoid one of them being bland, since that leads to this stratification of flavor and flavorlessness in the end product. Let the beans cook until heated through. Mush them just a little with a spoon or fork, not totally to a paste but just break about a quarter of them open.

4. Heat your tortillas in whatever way you fancy. I like the oven on 200. Assemble burritos with beans, squash mixture, salsa, lettuce, and whatever else you want. I added a little greek yogurt to mine (a fat free, low call, de-freakin'-lish substitute for sour cream) and it went really well with the flavor and texture.

Yummmmm!