QUINOA, AVOCADO & SWEET POTATO TIMBALE WITH ROASTED TOMATILLO DRESSING

This is another recipe from my favorite vegan cookbook: The Conscious Cook by Tal Ronnen. You know him, he helped Oprah eat vegan for a month and he works with Ellen DeGeneres & Portia De Rossi as well. Okay, enough name dropping. This is a salad but it is beefed up with lots of filling stuff so we eat it for dinner. 

Ingredients:

1 cup quinoa

2 cups stock of your choice

1/2 jalapeno, minced

1 tablespoon cilantro, minced

1 tablespoon olive oil

Juice of 1 lime

sale and paper to taste

1 sweet potato, peeled and diced

2 teaspoons olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

2 tomatillos

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1/4 cup cilantro, chopped

1 teaspoon honey

salt and pepper to taste

small corn tortillas, 1 per person

2 avocados, diced

Directions:

This salad is made from a few things put together which is why the ingredients have been separated. It may look complicated but it's easy.

1. Place the quinoa and stock in a small pot on the stove. Bring to a boil. Then cover, lower the heat and cook until the water is evaporated. This can vary depending on the type of quinoa you are using, but about 20 minutes.

2. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the papery skins from your tomatillos, brush them with olive oil and roast in the oven for 15 minutes.

3. While the quinoa and tomatillos are cooking, chop up the rest of your veggies. Toss the diced sweet potato with olive oil and salt and pepper.

4. Once the tomatillos are done, raise the oven temperature to 400 degrees and pop in the sweet potatoes for 15 minutes or until soft.

5. While the sweet potatoes are cooking, make the tomatillo dressing. Put the tomatillos, rice vinegar, cilantro, honey and salt & pepper in a food processor and pulse until smooth. Add the olive oil, one tablespoon at a time and pulse until emulsified. Set aside.

6. Once the quinoa is done, mix in the jalapeno, lime juice and salt & pepper. Set aside. You can wait for it to cool to make this more like a salad, but we liked it warm.

7. Once the sweet potatoes are done, pull them out of the oven and put in your tortillas for a few minutes until they crisp up.

8. Assemble the salad. Put the tortilla on a plate, put a few scoops of quinoa on the tortilla, top with sweet potatoes, then avocado, then the dressing and some fresh cilantro. Eat!

**Image via Whole Food Mommies**