Mexican-ish Dinner

Daughter requests Mexican tonight so I stoke up the rice cooker, load it with brown basmati, set the timer and forget it.  I think one of the most used small appliances is my rice cooker, at least 2 to 3 times a week.
I have an eggplant, a sweet potato and some zucchini that needs to be used up and there's some pineapple left over from breakfast and a new batch of peaches.  Nothing like eating locally.  I'm sure they're local to someone.  These are all getting roasted with an onion and some garlic.  Rough chopped and drizzled with a  bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and there's a nice side dish.  Not the zucchini though.

I start to saute up an onion and realize I want to put a little sear on the seitan.  I'm using two of the cutlets from a few days ago which is starting to dry out a bit and 2 of the seitan sausages.  I hydrate two kinds of TVP, a small ball shape and the flat oval shape in some boiling water I drop 2 tsps of chicken flavored not bullion into.  I slice up the seitan and sausage and drop them in with the onions.

I remove them after a few minutes and toss some celery, carrots and garlic into the pan.  For spices I used S&P, cumin, cumin seeds, coriander, (what the hell), and oregano.  Saute them up and then toss in my shredded zucchini and some broth and a can of black beans with the TVP and some more broth.  This was very brothy and needed a lot of time to reduce.

 I had originally thought of adding some diced apple to the mixture but sometimes when you cook things just spiral out of control.  I wanted a little bit of heat in the dish.  My daughter is 11 and has started to appreciate a bit of heat but not yet hot.  So instead of just throwing in a chipotle in adobo I marinated the apple in some apple cider vinegar.  I thought it would be a great opportunity to use some of the Achiote paste, (which I have no idea really how to use), and cut of a little Tbsp size square and tried to dissolve that in the broth.  Then I threw in a cinnamon stick for good measure right after the single chopped up pepper.

Wow, was that hot!  So instead of ruining the whole dish it became a chipotle pickled apple.

My daughter plated this and dotted the chipotle apple vinegar around the plate.  In the middle is brown rice.  Roasted veggies on the side and some of the reserved seitan on top.

 I added back most of the seitan and voila, another easy tasty weeknight meal.

Seitan Sausage Rounds, seitan slices and TVP over brown rice.