Vegan MoFo! Sweet potato and turnip cakes with chile-lime sour cream
Dinner, Tuesday October 13.
So when I decided to do this Vegan Month of Food thing, I imagined myself just bursting with creativity and making super-awesome food every night, trying new recipes and new ingredients. Of course that was completely delusional since my level of motivation and the amount of time available to me varies from evening to evening. Coming home after a more stressful than usual day of work, tired, hungry, and cranky is not the time to spend several hours fiddling about with a new recipe. It’s the time to make those dependable favorites that I can make without thinking too hard about it- tacos, stir fries, pasta. Things that are simple but delicious.
I’ve also been making an effort to cook things based on what I actually have on hand, instead of always running to the store to buy new things. This also involves a serious effort to use up all the CSA veggies. I got some turnips a couple of weeks ago and had no idea what to do with them. This past week I got some sweet potatoes, which I planned to use to make sweet potato pancakes (an old favorite). So for this dinner, I decided to add the turnips to the sweet potatos and see what happened. Other ingredients- onion, red pepper (I froze all the CSA peppers, that’s why it’s all frosty in the photo!), scallion (green parts only), garlic. Also flour and spices- salt, pepper, whatever else you like. I like adding a bit of hot paprika.
This is one of those things where a food processor REALLY comes in handy. Just grate up the veggies, mix in some flour to stick everything together, add your spices, and you’re ready to fry. I guess you could bake them too- I’ve never tried it since this is one of my “quick” meals and baking would take a while. I forgot to squeeze out the excess water after grating the veggies, so my batter was really runny. I just gave each handful a good squeeze while forming it into little patties, and it was fine. While they were frying I made a chile-lime sour cream with Tofutti Better than Sour Cream, lime juice, and sambal olek.
Served with a mixed greens salad with pickled red onions and a little bit of the leftover carrot/daikon slaw from Monday. The salad dressing was apple cider vinegar, agave nectar, and Penzey’s Green Goddess spice mix. Have I mentioned how much I adore Penzey’s? I’ll go into that store to pick up one thing and come out with ten other things too. They did let me down a little by not carrying Korean gochugaru, but as the sales clerk I talked to said “hey, we’re based out of Wisconsin, what do you expect?” Fair enough, and they’ve got plenty of other exotic things to keep me happy!
For dessert- caramel popcorn! I forgot to add the vanilla, and I wished I had about twice as much caramel, but still, yum. I think I might add some peanuts too next time.
