Here’s the short version of veggie tacos, an insanely easy and tasty way to get your vegetables:
Take out all the veggies you want to eat, making sure garlic and onion of some kind make the cut.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees Cut veggies all roughly the same size, leaving peeled garlic cloves whole. Toss in olive oil to coat. Salt and pepper. Any spice or herb you want (smoked paprika, thyme sprigs, dried oregano, anything like that), or chipotle adobo paste. Save bowl. Lay veggies in one layer on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet. Cook half hour, toss veggies to brown more evenly. Cook till browned to your liking. Meanwhile, wrap tortillas in foil, add to stove to heat for five or ten minutes. Decant veggies into bowl, toss with chopped herb of choice, cilantro or parsley and/or scallions.
Serve with tacos on the side, maybe salsa, maybe yogurt or sour cream or crème fraiche, maybe grated cheese.
If you have some lettuce, serve veggies on top.
Lemon or lime wedges on the side always nice. And, of course, hot sauce.
Long version:
So we’d been traveling, and arrived home near to dinner time to find the larder more than usually bare.
I did what I do in those circs. I pulled out what I had and laid it on the counter, eyeballing it speculatively.
There, on the counter, were the following:
Two small yellow potatoes.
A half a red onion.
Some skinny celery stalks.
A carrot.
A box of shishito peppers.
A half jalapeno pepper.
A bowl of four oven dried Roma tomatoes.
A head of garlic (I always have that).
A bunch of scallions.
A bunch of cilantro.
A stack of street taco corn tortillas.
A small bag of arugula.
A wedge of jack cheese.
A bowl of lemon wedges.
Aha.
So this is what I did. I diced the potatoes, small dice. Threw them into a big bowl. Same with the red onion. Added to the bowl. Sliced the celery. Peeled the carrot, diced it. Sliced the half jalapeno pepper into rounds. Diced the oven dried Romas. Peeled about half a head of garlic cloves. All of this went into the bowl.
Tossed them all with olive oil, salt, and a little red pepper.
Then, thinking it all looked a little dull without some kind of snazzy flavoring, went rooting around in my cupboard. I considered the smoked chipotle powder, when I remembered I’d found a neat trick for keeping the remainder of a can of smoked chipotles for later use in the freezer. You just decant what’s left into a little storage bag, press on it till it’s flat and all the air is gone, seal it and stick it in the freezer. When you want some, just open the bag and break off however much you think you’ll need.
I just so happened to have such a bag in the freezer. So I did what I suggested above. I chopped the frozen chipotles up and threw them in the bowl as well.
While I was in there, I noticed a half bag of frozen corn kernels. Hhhmmm, I thought. What the hell? Threw in a handful.
Then I did my favorite ‘cover the cookie sheet that lives in the oven with parchment paper and throw the veggies onto it.’ Spreading them out so they’d brown. Preheated oven to 400 degrees. Stuck the veggies in for 30 minutes, stirring them when I thought about it.
In the meantime, I tossed the shishito peppers in the now empty (but oil and chipotle slicked) bowl with more olive oil and salt. Stuck them in an earthenware dish that just held them in one layer. Put that in the oven on the shelf under the veggies.
Wrapped the tortillas (six, three for each of us) in some foil. Grated the cheese into a bowl. Chopped a huge amount of cilantro and scallions.
Fifteen minutes later, had a look. Veggies still needed browning. Shishito peppers were done, so I took them out, meaning to reheat them when the tortillas went in. Was getting impatient now, so turned the heat up to 425 in the oven. Fifteen minutes more, and everything was just about ready, so turned the heat down to 350, put the shishito peppers back in, and the foil wrapped tortillas.
Now the veggies were getting a little too browned! So took them out, tossed them back in the bowl formerly holding the shishito peppers, tossed them with the cilantro and scallions.
Said ‘dinner’s about ready!’. Put two plates beside the veggie bowl. Pulled out the peppers from the oven, placed them strategically there too. Then the foil wrapped tortillas went on a plate on the table between we two hungry eaters. Also the bowl of cheese. Also the lemon wedges and a bottle of hot sauce ( I always have bottles of hot sauce).
Handed a plate and a fork to the husband, pointed him to the veggies and peppers which he enthusiastically decanted onto said plate. I followed.
Then at the table, we made ourselves tacos at will. Tortilla. Veggies. Topped with a shishito pepper and a little cheese. Hot sauce.
Repeat.
Yum.
And now, I urge you all to do this same taco dinner whatever way you want with whatever you have on hand. Let me know how it turns out, too.