1 food 5 ways, Sweet Potatoes, Way #4: Sweet Potato - Black Bean Nachos

These are arguably the best nachos that I've had since going vegan. Granted, I don't make them much, and I don't usually branch away from the ordinary, but I really liked these. The ingredients were inspired by all the colors I think of for Halloween: orange, black, purple and green. By the time it all cooked up, it was close to the same color except for the guac, but it was Halloweenish going in.

Sweet Potato-Black Bean Nachos

Serves 2

Chips:

6 blue corn tortillas

1 Tbsp Canola Oil

Salt, optional (I actually used yummy smoked salt)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400. Brush both sides of the tortillas with a little bit of oil. Sprinkle on salt if desired. Bake on a pan until crispy, about 8 minutes. I use my big pizza pan so they all fit on one pan.

Sweet Potato-Black Bean Topping

2 tsp Canola Oil

1/2 cup red onion

2 cups shredded sweet potato

1-1/2 cups black beans

1-1/4 cups water, plus extra to desired doneness

Your favorite Taco Seasoning, to taste

Directions:

Preheat the oil in a heavy skillet over medium to medium high heat. Add onions and cook about 5 minutes until beginning to turn translucent and brown a bit. Add the sweet potato, 1-1/4 cup water and taco seasoning. After sweet potato is well coated, add the black beans. Cook until the water has mostly cooked out, but nothing is sticking yet. Check the doneness of the sweet potato. If it's not done enough for you, add 1/4 cup water and cook until it's almost done again. I ended up doing this twice (adding a total of 1/2 cup of water) for sweet potato that wasn't mushy, but wasn't crunchy anymore either. Total cooking time was about 20 minutes.

Other Ingredients:

Daiya (or your favorite cheese or cheese sauce)

Guacamole

Directions:

Assemble by putting chips on the plate, topping with some of the sweet potato-black bean topping, then daiya, then more sweet potato-black bean topping then a dollop of guac. Really, assemble it how you want, but that's how I did it.

Notes:

1. For the taco seasoning, I used 2 Tbsp of this one and to me it was on the hot side. If I were serving it to others in my family, I would probably just use 1 tbsp)

2. I thought the Daiya would melt when I put some of the hot filling on top. It didn't. I liked it fine unmelted, but if you want the cheese melted, you'll need to put your nachos in a pan and heat in the oven or put it on a microwave-safe plate and melt it that way.

3. If you don't want to make your own chips, use store bought. Blue is great for Halloween, but yellow or white would taste the same.

4. Here's my guacamole, but make it however you like.

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Well, there's one recipe left! Yes, I know you think there are supposed to be two because I still have way #5 for both navy beans and sweet potatoes. But, the plan is to celebrate the last day of the Vegan Month of Food by getting a little crazy and combining them! Let's see how it works...