Black Bean and Sweet Potato Tortilla Casserole from Vegan Holiday Kitchen

Two nights ago I was still in the cooking mood, so I made another recipe from Nava Atlas's Vegan Holiday Kitchen, jumping ahead to the December cookbook for the #VegCookbookClub.

It had been a toss-up between making the Pueblo Corn Pie and the Black Beand and Sweet Potato Torilla Casserole for my weekend family get-together. I went with the Corn Pie. but I had also bought the ingredients for the Tortilla Casserole, so I went for it.

This was another pretty simple, and very hearty dish. It had a few more steps than the Pueblo Corn Pie, but less baking time, so overall it took about the same 45 mintues or so to make, including microwaving the sweet potatoes and baking the finished product.

A couple of recipe adjustment I made: I didn't have any unflavored rice milk on hand, so I used soy milk. Don't think that made an appreciable difference. I also had some poblano peppers on hand, so I chopped one up and tossed it into the black bean/salsa verde/onion/garlic/red pepper mix to give the dish even a bit more spice. It was not overly hot even so, so I would definitely do that again. I would also make sure I was really including the right amount of spinach. Spinach cooks down so much. I just eyeballed the amount, and I would have enjoyed a bit more of the spinach layer.

And as with the Pueblo Corn Pie, I might cut back on the Daiya cheddar shreds. Daiya is awesome, but it does have a very distinct flavor, and it can overpower a dish. It's not like I have a better cheese recommendation to make (although I like Heidi Ho's Smoked Gouda), but for my taste (and the taste of my S.O.) I would scale back a bit.

Lastly, the cheese sauce component, mostly Daiya cooked with a corn starch/rice milk thickener (I used soy) was really good on its own, and I could see whipping up just that portion of the recipe to use in other dishes.

I'm going to post several pictures of this dish, so you can see how it looks form the top, from the side, and then a slice, so you can see the layers.

Thumbs up for the Black Bean and Sweet Potato Tortilla Casserole.