Roasted Vegetable and Tofu Enchiladas with Mole Sauce – Omni approved

I wanted to start the post with a tease of the recipe to follow later. Nothing like a little creamy Mexican food for lunch especially when it is also reasonably healthy. ;-)


Yom Kippur:

For those of you that observe Yom Kippur, I hope you had an easy fast.

Saturday Morning:

Happy Saturday …… well it is Sunday now since I didn’t post this yesterday.  I hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Saturday morning started slowly at our house like always. It is our only day to sleep in so we take advantage of it by turning off the alarm and allowing our bodies to sleep until they naturally wake up. We lounged around until 9 am. It was great, LOL.

Breakfast was oatmeal for Dan. I made myself another uber healthy smoothie. The color was really atrocious. It was so bad I almost didn’t post the picture but I wanted you all to see what it will look like. Thankfully it tastes much better than it looks. ;-)

Saturday’s smoothie contained: 2 stalks of shredded kale, 1 ½ carrots cut into slices, ¼ cup uncooked oatmeal, 1 frozen banana, 6 large frozen strawberries, ¼ teaspoon cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon powdered ginger, and water to process the mixture (probably 1 ½ cups). Add stevia to taste if you think it needs the sweetness. Here are the stats on this smoothie:

Calories 372.05
Calories From Fat (22%) - 83.15

Total Fat - 9.95g
Saturated Fat - 1.11g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 126.49mg
Potassium - 1423.55mg
Total Carbohydrates - 70.77g
Fiber - 13.58g
Sugar - 25.93g
Protein - 9.53g

Additionally this smoothie contains: 30,600IU of vitamin A, 160mg of vitamin C, 190mg of calcium, 109mcg of folate, 567mcg of vitamin K, 244mg of phosphorus and 130mg of magnesium. Not too shabby for a few minutes of work. This is why I love having smoothies for breakfast. They are a simple and easy way to pack a lot of nutrition into a glass.

Do any of you like to have smoothies for breakfast? If you have a favorite recipe I would love to know what it is. I am always looking for new smoothie ideas. ;-)

Lunch: Roasted Vegetable and Tofu Enchiladas with Mole Sauce

As always we had my parents over for lunch. With the weather turning cooler Dan wanted me to make some sort of enchilada type dish this weekend. We discussed possible options for the interior and this is the one he selected. I decided to top it with a mole sauce to give the dish some sophistication. When we out to dinner last week with our friend Louis Ian had a slow cooked duck mole on the menu that Louis ordered. Since Louis loved it I have had mole in the back of my mind. I thought it would be good on enchiladas too and it was. Here is what I did:

Roasted Vegetable and Tofu Enchiladas with Mole Sauce
Serves 6

Enchilada Ingredients:

1 eggplant, diced
1 large zucchini, diced
14 ounces of firm or extra firm organic tofu, squeezed dry (check the label for soy protein isolates)
2 tablespoons flour (I used brown rice because that bag was open but any type would work)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and grated
½ teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon chili powder
¼ teaspoon cumin seed
6 large whole wheat tortillas or whole wheat flat bread (if you don’t make you own check the label for soy protein isolates)
3 Roma tomatoes, thinly sliced to line the baking pan

Mole Sauce Ingredients:

2 cups tomato sauce
½ red onion, peeled and thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and grated
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon anise seed
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
2 teaspoons raw pumpkin seeds
¼ teaspoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon cocoa powder

Garnish Ingredients

2 Roma tomatoes, peeled, finely diced
2 tablespoon of roasted seeds (pumpkin or squash)
¼ cup fresh parsley, minced

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a half sheet pan with parchment, silpat, or easy release aluminum foil.

Place the dice veggies on the sheet pan and roast until they begin to brown. My oven was set on convection and the veggies were brown in 25 minutes. The reason you are roasting the veggies is to dry them out a little so that they don’t make your filling too wet.

To make the sauce place the cumin, anise, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, and cloves in a spice grinder (or a coffee grinder you reserved for spices). Grind the mixture until it is smooth.

In a small pot combine all the mole ingredients. Cook on low, stirring occasionally, until the sauce starts to brown and the flavors married. I cooked mine for about an hour on the lowest setting.

Combine the tofu, flour, garlic, oregano, chili powder and cumin in your food processor and process until smooth. Place the tofu and roasted veggies in a large mixing bowl and combine well.

Line the bottom of the baking dish with sliced tomato.

Place 1/6 of the filling onto the end of the tortilla or flat bread and roll up. Place the filling wrap in the baking dish on top of the sliced tomatoes. Continue until you have filled 6 wraps. Top with the mole sauce and bake until hot (about 30 minutes).

To serve top with diced tomato, toasted squash or pumpkin seeds and parsley.

Nutritional Information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 292.27
Calories From Fat (30%) - 86.5

Total Fat - 10.72g
Saturated Fat - 1.56g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 820.47mg
Potassium - 995.36mg
Total Carbohydrates - 38.77g
Fiber - 13.95g
Sugar - 10.32g
Protein - 22.09g

Comments:

This dish was very popular yesterday. Not only did Dan and I like it but so did my omni parents. I would say this is omni approved. I have not had enchiladas with mole sauce before but I will be making this again.

To accompany the enchilada I made 4 small side salads which consisted of: 1 pound mesclun greens, 2 carrots thinly sliced on a mandoline, 1 cucumber and 2 radishes also sliced on the mandoline. I tossed this with salsa.

Dinner Out:

Since we didn’t go out for our anniversary last week we opted to go out last night. As you probably guessed we ended up visiting Ian. It was a gorgeous evening so we had dinner on the patio.

We started with an appetizer or beet carpaccio with baby arugula, thinly sliced red onion, pistaschios and oranges. It was not only stunning to look at but it tasted delicious. I will be making my own version of this at home as soon as I pick up some oranges.

Next Dan had to have the Szechuan tofu appetizer with broccoli, carrot, mushroom and pine nuts. I had a few bites of this but let Dan have most of it.

Dan was craving crispy whole wheat pizza for dinner tonight so that is what he ordered. Ian suggested a putanesca pizza which contained marinara, fresh sliced tomatoes, black and green olives, red onions, and capers. It was absolutely delicious. Definitely something else I will be making at home. I only had one piece of the little pizza but I really enjoyed it. Dan was happy to eat the other three slices. Isn’t he thoughtful to suffer for me?;-)

Sorry I didn’t get this posted last night. We didn’t make it home until 10:30 and since we get up for the market at 6am I didn’t have much time to write.

The farmers’ market was lovely this morning. We brought home a huge haul which I will tell you all about in my next post. Talk to you all again soon.