Happy Monday, food lovers! Did you have a wonderful weekend?
I spent the weekend writing, and I attended a cookout with my in laws on Sunday for a few hours so it was nice and mostly relaxing.
Do you ever go through spells when it comes to your cooking? As someone who cooks a lot, I find that I’ll get really obsessed with a thing for a while and make it often before I tone it down and goes into the regular vegan meal rotation. It’s happened with puree on the bottom of a dish. With big batch vegan meals, too. I don’t abandon them completely, but after a while I tone it down.
But when it’s over, it’s kind of a hangover of sorts. Now that part of my life is over, what do I do?
Usually I fall back on old faithful meals like salads. Cold salads. Hot & cold salads. Noodle salads. And this summer…cauliflower salads too.
Recently I found myself in this exact position and I was honestly really clueless about how to get out of this funk. I just finished the first draft of my next novel, One Night in Paris and I’d been deep in the bowels of French cuisine but it’s also been one million degrees outside and I wasn’t even considering testing out vegan French cuisine. Again.
But then the search algorithm did it’s thing and suddenly my Instagram and Pinterest feeds are filled with Moroccan food and it just seemed like the thing to do. Right?
So I came across this (not vegan) recipe that looked really enticing and since I like the flavors of Moroccan food, and i like chickpeas and carrots, chances were good that I’d like a veganized version of this dish.
And here we are.
The foundation of this dish was chickpeas, carrots, onions and spices. Because I’m increasing my protein intake right now, I also added a bunch of TVP to fill out the dish. And before you ask, yes, I did make enough for four servings so I only had to cook once this day!
Kitchen Tools:
*Vegetable peeler
*Kitchen knife
*Cutting board
*Silicon baking sheet
Ingredients:
*Chickpeas
*Carrots
*Onion
*TVP (or other vegan protein source)
*Dried cranberries
*Moroccan spices: turmeric, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, cloves, cumin, ginger & allspice
Directions:
*Cook TVP according to instructions (hydrate, drain & cook). I seasoned with Moroccan spices and baked them in the oven at 200C for about 20 minutes.
*Cut onions & carrots into half-slices. Keep them similar in size so that they cook uniformly.
*Add water or broth and Moroccan spices to a skillet until they start to steam. Stir in onions and carrots. Stir regularly to avoid cooking, adding more liquid as needed.
*Stir TVP into the skillet. It should be slightly crispy and that’s okay, that’s what we’re going for. You just want everything to blend together since it’s all cooked. Add in dried cranberries and turn off the heat.
*Let the skillet sit for a few minutes just to give the cranberries time to plump. The cranberries are optional (they were not part of the original recipe) but I added a little extra kick of spice and the cranberries cut through it nicely.
*Serve & enjoy!
Honestly this vegan meal was a really nice surprise. The flavors pack a big ol’ punch that made my tongue breakdance and my Hubs did his happy dance while he ate it.
Two big thumbs up…ya know, if you really want to try it. 😉
Some links are affiliate links which means I’ll earn money if you buy these products. Feel free to click on the links to help a fellow blogger out! Thanks.
The Spicy Spatula 
Whatcha think?