I know we’re a week early for Cinco de Mayo celebrations – not to worry, I have something fun up my sleeve for the big day! – but I couldn’t resist picking up a beautiful poblano pepper this weekend at the farmer’s market, along with some lovely yellow bell peppers at the grocery, with the express purpose of stir-frying some fajitas!
After I got home from work, I put a cup of white rice in the rice cooker along with a packet of saffron seasoning, added two cups of water, and let the cooker do its thing for the better part of half an hour. Next, I got to work on dicing the veggies – the poblano and bell peppers, plus two wild ramps as a complement, as well as about a quarter of an onion for garnish after the cooking time was over.
When we had about 15 minutes left in the rice’s cooking time, I put some oil in a pan and heated it up to Medium! I had a wayward package of Gardein “beef” tips in the freezer, and I knew they would make a perfect pairing with the peppers, so I threw them into the pan to cook by themselves for a while before adding the peppers about five minutes later. A fistful of diced wild ramps completed the trio with much pizazz and fanfare, and then I topped all the veggies with a generous helping of adobo seasoning, cumin, and chipotle powder, stirring often.
As the peppers were beginning to turn crisp-tender, I heated up four flour tortillas in the oven for about 5 minutes, just until they got comfortably warm. The rice cooker clicked off at just the right time, and dinner was ready to serve!
We each enjoyed two tortillas’ worth of fajitas and piled them high: first with the beef-and-veggie mixture, sure, but then also some diced onion, vegan sour cream, Daiya pepperjack shreds, hot sauce, cilantro from the garden, and, in my case, some nutritional yeast for good measure. (Y’all know how I feel about nutritional yeast!) The rice was the perfect side item, as usual, and believe me, neither of us left the table hungry tonight!
Surprisingly, we have a bit of the beef-and-peppers filling left over for lunch tomorrow. I’ll be taking care of that, thank you very much!
:)