Vegan Mofo #9 - Terry’s Eggplant Torta Sandwich...

Vegan Mofo #9 - Terry’s Eggplant Torta Sandwich 

The Book - Viva Vegan!
The Author - Terry Hope Romero
The Recipe - Eggplant Torta Sandwich
Page # 54-55 Pickled Red Onions on Page #43
Difficulty - Easy
Duration - Roughly an hour

Viva Vegan is a fantastic cook book that I never use enough, that’s why Mofo is so fantastic. It almost always forces you to use cook books you never use, or ingredients you never think about. It forces you to get creative and do things you wouldn’t normally do. There aren’t many sandwich recipes in Viva Vegan but of the few there are I chose to make the Eggplant Torta for several reasons. 1) My husband loves eggplant and I don’t cook it often enough. 2) A friend of a friend had just bestowed upon us two large and lovely eggplants. 3) It sounded amazing!

The sandwich is super simple. First you marinate the eggplants in lime juice, olive oil, tomato paste, garlic, oregano and cumin. Then you roast it until it’s all nice, soft and juicy. Then you layer it on some thick sandwich bread or rustic rolls with pickled red onions, chipotle mayo, lettuce, avocado, tomato, refried beans, and sliced pickled jalapenos. Making the pickled red onions is super easy and I highly recommend it. It’s just thin sliced red onion boiled for thirty seconds then run under cold water. Then you dump them in a mason jar with some lime juice, salt, sugar and vinegar, and let it marinate. The refried beans you can make from scratch too and Terry has a recipe in her book for that. I however opted to use canned refried beans. Maybe that’s less impressive but my husband is not a bean person, certainly not a refried bean person and so I wasn’t going to make a huge batch of from scratch beans just for myself. Say what you like about canned beans but it worked just fine.

Now this sandwich is a total mess to eat but then that’s part of the fun isn’t it? I also love that it uses simple ingredients. Real, whole foods not all of that ‘vegan this’ or ‘vegan that’ in this recipe, just good ole’ wholesome veggies. Though if you were so inclined I’m sure the sandwich would also be good with a bit of nondairy sour cream or nondairy cheese, but I liked it as it was. There was just such an amazing array of flavors in this sandwich. You had the spicy jalapenos, the rich creamy beans, the deliciously soft and moist eggplant, with the tart onions and the creamy spicy mayo. The only non whole food was vegan mayo but you could always make your own mayo instead of getting store-bought for an even more unprocessed meal.

This has definitely been one of my husbands favorite sandwiches so far, me too actually. It is simply divine and I know I’ll be making it again and again! Of course besides just being mouth-watering good it’s also super pretty to look at! Eat the rainbow right?