Sweet Potato, Black Bean & Avocado Nachos
One of those dishes you can tweak to suit anyone and ramp up the portions accordingly - it’s vegan heaven, but you can add feta, mozzarella, or grated cheddar for the veggies, and of course shred in some leftover chicken or fry off some steak for the meat eaters. As you wish. Which of course applies to the heat. Black beans are high in protein and fibre, avocados give you the good fats and the tomatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, garlic/chili/coriander and lime juice deliver the vitamins and minerals. Don’t worry about the nacho chips asd we all have to live.
Serves 4
You will need:
1 large sweet potato (300g or so)
1-2 avocados, roughly chopped
1 large red or green chili, chopped
1 small clove of garlic, chopped
2 handfuls of fresh coriander
½ tsp cumin seed
½ tsp smoked paprika
1 bag of plain nacho chips
1 can of black beans, rinsed
1 punnet of cherry tomatoes, roughly chopped, about 200g
½ red onion, chopped
juice of 1-2 limes
some chopped jalapeno peppers from a jar to garnish
1 ball of mozzarella, or 1/3 block of feta cheese
or a couple of large handfuls of grated Cheddar cheese
Sour cream to finish if you have it
Heat your oven up to 180%. Peel the sweet potato, cube it and toss in olive oil and seasoning. Throw onto a baking sheet and bake for about 25 minutes, or until soft and slightly caramelized.
Gently fry off the onion with the cumin, garlic and chili. Add the meat if you are using any. Set aside.
In a bowl (same one you tossed the sweet potato in), add the rinsed black beans, tomatoes, avocado, lime juice, paprika and torn coriander leaves (leave a few to decorate at the end). Toss gently to combine. Season with salt and pepper. Grate the cheese, or pull apart the mozzarella into pieces and set aside.
When the sweet potato is ready, find a wide-ish platter with sides and start to layer up. Start with a layer of nacho chips, scatter over the black bean/avo/tomato mixture, scatter the spicy onion mix, dot over the lumps of cheese and add a sprinkling of smoked paprika as you go. Add some more fresh chilli if you feel like it.
Finally, leaving a some sprigs of coriander to garnish along with some jalapeno peppers, place under the grill to melt that delicious cheese and set the whole the whole thing rolling. A large dollop of sour cream tops it all off. Ariba.. Ariba.. ariba…