I made this fantastic vegetarian taco dish a while ago and the children both loved it (and so did the husband and I), so I've decided to add it to my blog. You can serve it with guacamole and a Mexican salad, or with different salsas. I think a tomato salsa or Picco de Gallo would go very well with it, too. The original recipe can be found in the 'Handboek voor ecologische voeding', Velt, one of my favourite cookbooks. I changed the quantities so you can use a full box of taco shells instead of just 8.
Vegetarian Taco Oven Bake
Serves 4
- A box of Taco Shells (12 shells)
- 6 large potatoes
- 1 green bell pepper
- 1 yellow bell pepper
- 1 red bell pepper
- 1 large onion (or 2 medium-sized ones)
- 1,5 dl cream
- 100 g grated Emmental cheese
- 1 tsp. Taco Seasoning
- 1 tbsp. olive oil
Can be served with:
- Scrub the potatoes and boil them in their jackets. Once cooked, put them aside to cool down. Once they have cooled down enough, you can peel them and slice them (slices should be approx. 0,5 cms thick). It's a bit of a messy job, but they taste fantastic this way. Sprinkle some salt on top of the slices.
- Chop the bell peppers into small squares. Put them in a pot and add some water until they are covered, then cook for 5 mins. (If your children are still very small, you might want to cook them for a bit longer, until they are soft.)
- Slice the onions so you get onion rings. Heat the olive oil in a pan and add the onion rings and the taco seasoning. Fry the onions until they are glazed.
- Depending on the size of your oven dishes, you can make do with one very large oven dish, or use 2. I used 2, so I poured approx. 1 dl of cream into 1 oven dish, and 0,5 dl in the smaller one.
- Then put first potato slices, then onion rings and then bell peppers into each taco shell and put them in the oven dishes. Cover everything with grated cheese and put the dishes in the oven at 220°C (or 200°C for a fan-assisted oven) for15 mins.
Usually when I have cauliflower left over I make soup with it, but this time I decided to try something different. So I made this with some cauliflower that had already been cooked the day before, but of course you could use a fresh one and cook it or steam it first.
It doesn't look like a cauliflower soufflé, even though cauliflower is the main ingredient:
And it's not a 'real' soufflé (since it's not necessary to separate yolks from egg whites in this case), but it's very similar (and easier to prepare). I served this with cherry tomatoes, jacket potatoes and hamburgers, but there are lots of other options.
'Fake' cauliflower soufflé
- 400 g cauliflower (cooked or steamed)
- 3 tbsp milk (or soy milk, or cream if you prefer)
- 4 tbsp chopped chives
- 2 eggs
- pepper
- (salt)
- oil (I used rapeseed oil)
First put the cauliflower in the blender and blend it, then add all of the other ingredients except for the oil and blend it again. If you don't want the 'puree' to turn green you could leave out the chives, too, and just stir them in with a spoon.
Preheat the oven to 180°C or 160° for a fan-assisted oven. Grease 4 soufflé cups with a little (rapeseed) oil. Put the cauliflower 'puree' into the cups with a spoon. Put them in the oven for approx. 20 mins.
My children (17 months and 3 years old) both loved this, and of course you could prepare this with other vegetables (broccoli, spinach, carrots, ...), too...
(Dutch recipe available on demand)
