Viva Vegan!

Tres leches cake with coconut and fresh fruit. The cake is soaked in a boozy, milky spice mixture and finished off with a coconut custard type topping. I've never had the "real" thing but this is delicious cake. Tomas says it tastes pretty accurate. This is funny because I think I reduced the liquid too much at first and then just winged it making more soaking liquid and had no idea if it what work. It did! Fair warning: time intensive recipe. Will impress (and quiet) your (drunken) friends!



Potato seitan tacos (use the skewers recipe, but not the skewers is all), refried black beans and jalepeno-lime rice. The tacos, like a few recipes in this book could stand to have to oil content reduced a bit, but were thoroughly delicious all the same. You'd think as a vegan you'd be pretty jaded about rice and beans; "I've tried it all" you say in a raspy voice to the young and naive veg-inclined. But NO, you discover you haven't tried them all. These particular dishes came out so light and so delicately flavored (almost *fluffy* I could say) all descriptors not usually used on rice and bean dishes or about a lot of Latin food in general.

All recipes from Viva Vegan by Terry Hope Romero. Aka my new favorite cookbook. To be fair, Tomas has been the one cooking the most from it, but I have really enjoyed *eating* everything, so I am still an expert and stuff. We also have made the yucca with Cuban garlic-lime mojo sauce, the Brazilian braised kale, annatto oil, arroz con leche(rice pudding), peanut sauce, steamed red seitan and steamed white seitan and the dough recipe for baked empanadas. Honestly, all the recipes so far are incredible and the only modification I would suggest is possible decreasing the amount of oil in some of the recipes which really is a matter of personal taste anyway. It was just surprising to me because I do have a personal taste for a goodly fat content. Anyway, the seasonings are dead-on and the methodology is user-friendly.

Muchas gracias Terry!