A guide to veggie Mexican food (with cactus!)

I was inspired today by a visit to Cool Chile Co at Borough Market, where you can buy all sorts of wonderful Mexican stuff you can't get elsewhere in the UK, including tinned green tomatoes, proper maize flour, and nopalitos, which are cactus paddles that have a smoky taste, a bit like roasted aubergines and peppers.

 If you want to try them and can't get to Borough Market, Cool Chile  deliver in the UK, and your best bet in Paris is an épicerie éxotique in the Rue François Miron by St Paul metro. If not, you can top this recipe with lots of other veggie things - I've tried the aforementioned grilled strips of aubergine and pepper, stir-fried mushrooms, broad beans and asparagus spears. The main thing about Mexican food, though, is the tortillas and all the yummy sauces, which makes it easy to make things vegetarian without losing what makes them great, and means that, contrary to popular belief, Mexico isn't too difficult a place for veggies to live (as long as you never attempt to explain to anyone why you don't eat meat, obviously).
This recipe is for sopes, which are medium sized tortillas piled with yummy things, and my favorite meal. For the record: tacos are smaller tortillas with toppings; enchiladas are bigger tortillas stuffed, covered in sauce and baked in the oven; quesadillas are tortillas made with wheat flour instead of maize and fried with cheese in; and burritos are not Mexican food. For sopes, you need refried beans, chilli sauce and guacamole, along with the cactus or alternative topping, so here are recipes for all of them (credit due to Ruben Casas Montanez, the best Mexican chef I know).
So the beans first:-

-about 500g red kidney beans
-half an onion
-a red chilli
-a splash of milk
-coriander

Add a little chopped chilli and some fresh coriander to a pot of boiling water, then add the beans. Bring to the boil, then cover and cook over a low heat until the beans are really soft. Drain and mash with a fork or a potato masher. Fry half an onion, finely chopped, with a little more chilli, then add the beans. Stir the mixture over a low heat, adding just enough milk to make it a creamy consistency. You can use a food processor to make it really smooth, but if the beans have been properly mashed, it should be a pretty smooth paste.

Salsa verde (for salsa roja, substitute ordinary tomatoes and a red chilli for green):-

-800g green tomatoes
-2 green chillies
-half an onion

Fry the onion and the chillies, then when soft add the tomatoes, including all the juice, and briefly stir fry. Then pour the whole lot into a liquidiser and blitz. Easy!

Guacamole:-
Everyone has their own way of doing this, but here's mine.

-2 really ripe avocados
-a green chilli
-a couple of tomatoes
-juice of a lime
-lots of fresh coriander

Mash the avocado, chop everything else and mash together. I think most rubbish guacamole is usually short of either lime or coriander, so be generous with both!

Now for the tortillas. As I'm sure you know, these need maize or corn flour, not wheat. Put 250g of flour in a bowl with about 400ml of hot water, cover and leave for around 15 minutes. You should then be able to knead it into a mixture with the consistency of soft clay - add more water if you need. If you don't have a proper tortilla press, the best substitute I know is to cover two heavy wooden chopping boards in cling film and press the tortillas between them - so you roll the mixture into balls, flatten them with your hands, put each one on one chopping board and press down hard with the other. You want them the size of a saucer and about half a centimetre thick. Then heat a dry pan and cook the tortillas one at a time, about 30 seconds on each side (any longer and they'll stick). Wrap them in a tea towel to keep warm.

Then the fun part - put the refried beans, guacamole, salsa, vegetable topping (I used cactus) and some crumbled feta cheese in bowls on the table, along with the tortillas, and make a mess! Spreading the tortillas with beans first, then veg, cheese, guacamole and salsa is generally the least messy way (I think Mexicans eat such a lot of refried beans because they basically stick everything else together) . And you definitely can't use a knife and fork.

Welcome to my new blog, have some paella

Hello,

I've recently moved back to London, the most cosmopolitan and delicious of cities, from a place where most spices are impossible to find and chillies had to be smuggled past airport security on the lookout for potentially disease-carrying illicit vegetables. The tiny South American nation of Uruguay has much to recommend it, but if like me you are a life-long vegetarian (or simply not the biggest fan of dripping slabs of beef), food isn't one of them. Anyway, I promised myself that once I got back to a land of culinary diversity I would appreciate it properly, forage in markets, sample everything, and cook elaborately. I've also been inspired by a recent rash of newspaper articles advocating going veggie as a means of saving the planet, but generally accompanied with uninspiring recipes, and by friends who think I must eat loads of Quorn and Linda McCartney sausages (I don't eat these things EVER, because vegetables are AMAZING). Thus was born the idea of starting a food blog, because lots of people have one, but not many are meat-free, and because I want to pay tribute to the glorious joy of being in London and being able to find everything you could ever want to eat (if you ever feel ambivalent about multiculturalism, go and live somewhere where all the restaurant menus are pretty much the same, you'll be begging visitors to bring houmous and coriander too).
So without further ado, here's a recipe - for paella, as I asked some people selling it off a truck by City Hall today if they had a vegetarian version and they told me there was no such thing, and I beg to differ. This does not claim to be very authentic, but does feature piquillo peppers and Calasparra rice from Brindisa in Borough Market, and has been eaten and approved by Spanish people. It's a brilliant recipe for house parties - just make a huge dish and let everyone help themselves, and in my experience half of them won't realize there's no meat or seafood in it.

You need:-
an onion
6 cloves of garlic
a green and a red pepper
2 artichokes, prepared and chopped
a teaspoon of rosemary
a litre of vegetable stock
a tablespoon of tomato puree
a pinch of saffron
a generous teaspoon of paprika
250g rice
a jar of piquillo peppers in oil
olives
a squeeze of lemon juice
fresh parsley

Fry the onion, the garlic, the peppers and the artichokes in oil (in a BIG pan) until they start to soften, then add the rosemary. While that's cooking, make a litre of stock and add the tomato puree and the saffron, and stir until they dissolve. Add the rice to the cooking vegetables, stir and cook for a few minutes before pouring the liquid in. You are not supposed to stir paella at all, just leave it on a low heat and let the rice absorb the water until it's cooked (add more stock if it needs it), but I would move it around a little if you ever want to wash the pan up again. It's supposed to have a burnt crust on the bottom though. When the rice is done, turn off the heat and mix in olives, piquillo peppers, lemon juice and fresh parsley. And eat!