Chorizo-Spinach Sopes



Chorizo-Spinach Sopes. As you can see, I so anxious to sink my teeth in that I forgot to take the photo.
Better late than never!


Saturday night, my pan-pal the Gastronomist Economist and I made a dinner using recipes from Terry Hope Romero's Viva Vegan!, a cookbook with vegan latin food recipes. Rather than taking meaty Latin recipes and swapping in beans for the pork, Romero offers several recipes for home-made seitan. Unlike any seitan recipes I've seen before, the recipes include both chickpea flour and nutritional yeast in the gluten flour mix. While I avoid commercial meat substitutes (too much sodium and way too many unpronounceable ingredients), I was intrigued by Romero's seitan preparation.

I decided to make Chorizo-Spinach Sopes, a dish that would require us to make our own seitan chorizo sausage and our own sopes, plump little tarts made of tortilla dough.


Three stages of chorizo sausage: wrapped in foil for baking, freshly baked, and chopped for the sopes.

 This was probably a bit ambitious, since the chorizo alone needs to bake for 35 minutes and rest for 40. Needless to say, it took us three and a half hours to put dinner on the table.

However, with the sausage already made, this is a quick dinner entree. The Economist didn't like the chorizo, which we made with an abundance of spicy chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, but I am completely addicted. I'm salivating right now thinking about the piquant bites of sausage nestled in their soft masa tart. The only other chorizo I've had to date is an unappetizing soy chorizo with a strange metallic flavor. Romero's recipe outshines it in every possible way and avoids the ludicrous amount of sodium to boot. She is absolutely right to say that you shouldn't do what we did and use the sausage just 40 minutes out of the oven (though I think it was still delicious). An overnight chill in the fridge firmed up the sausage and melded the flavors.

We also made Romero's curdito, a Salvadorian marinated slaw, as a side dish, but I think it makes a better topping. Its crisp tang provides a beautiful contrast of color, flavor, and texture.

The sopes with slices of avocado - a little past their prime - on top. The curdito is on the side, but I've found that it works well as a topping.

I'm looking forward to making more dishes from this book, which includes empanadas, pupusas, and tamales!