Today, I made lentil tacos for the first time for dinner, and it was insanely tasty - something I'd definitely make again to feed / impress someone with vegetarian inclinations.
I'm taking a departure from my usual template, and more of a free form that I hope will still be readable/accessible to the viewer.
Taco Ingredients:
-Lentil Taco Shell (home-made, inspired by the Indian Dosa, by pulsing pre-soaked split yellow lentils in a blender with some water and spices -- I just added coriander, oregano and salt -- I found that having no spices added in is too bland -- but any other spice mixture can do -- and fried it onto a piping hot griddle covered in a thin layer of oil -- poured it on like a pancake, and once the bottom of the pancake had seared, spread the top uncooked part with the back of a spoon to spread out and thin out the entire cake into a thin layer - I prefer it crispy. For me, the hardest part is getting the lentil mixture the right viscosity to make sure it spreads evenly while cooking without clumping into a gloopy mess -- the easiest way to prevent this is to not add too much water -- so I'll have to come up with a ratio of lentils to water, but at this present time, I eyeball it so the texture is similar to that of a pancake batter, and toast both sides in the griddle so there are brown marks)
-Bean and Chili mixture (This is the "meat" substitute. I took the pinto bean mixture I had formerly made using my Instapot sitting in a stored container in the fridge, and added that to a small frying mixture of oil, Rotel's canned tomatoes & chilis, and chopped green bell pepper -- the water from the canned tomato mixture helped add some moisture into the pinto bean mix and gave it a beautiful, glossy sheen and additional depth of flavor. Personally, I can't stand when vegetables have been overly processed to imitate meat -- let meat be meat, and vegetables be vegetables, and honour both in their own glory! Even as a kid, I wasn't a huge fan of imitation crab meat and couldn't really stand Impossible burgers when they came out. More traditional cultural vegetable protein meat alternative sources like tofu, seitan has always been okay with me in terms of taste quality -- although, word-to-the-wise, seitan is literally gluten, so if anyone is gluten-sensitive or has a wheat allergy, seitan is like the one thing you should stay away from.)
-Daisy's Lite Sour Cream, Spicy Pickled Carrots (Inspired by Mexican-Style), Hot Sauce of Choice (I used a Louisiana-style), Freshly Chopped Cilantro (it truly elevates the entire flavor profile of the taco, in my opinion. I suppose if someone had that gene OR6A2, as it's called, that makes cilantro taste like soap, I'd recommend an alternative like chopped chives - those go really well with sour cream (like a sour cream & onion flavor).
I still remember in high school AP biology when we watched GATTACA and discussed genetics -- one of the topics was talking about how color-blindness is linked to genetics, and the teacher showed a slide, with a color-blind test, and said, "Okay, so to a color-blind person with Red-Green color-blindness, they won't be able to see the difference or read the numbers." And my classmate in front of me said, "Oh. I think I just realized I'm color-blind." And we both had a laugh. But then, I don't know if he really did anything about it??? He was surprisingly very chill about it. I still think about it sometimes. The casualness of how he discovered his color-blindness, although, I think it's because he had a family history - a grandfather had it.
When I assembled it all together, it made for quite an amazing meal, about 4-6 tacos worth.
For a free online color-blind test, check out: https://www.colorlitelens.com/color-blindness-test.html#Redgreen
For more information about color-blindness: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/11604-color-blindness
My most popular Spotify Playlist to Date!: CTY Canon Carlisle early 2000s
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