Collard Wraps

Inspired by the V-con kick over at Chez Mama, I decided to cook up these yummy black eyed pea-collard green wraps tonight. These are really just my interpretation of the recipe, as I don't actually own the cookbook. The Dalai Mama gave me her version of the recipe and I just kind of winged it from there.

For my wraps. I boiled the 5 largest collard leaves I had for about 10 minutes, until they were soft but still a nice bright green. Then I drained them and set them aside to cool. In a large skillet I sauted one diced onion, one minced shallot, and two cloves of minced garlic, and 8 oz of sliced crimini mushrooms. Once that was softened I added in about 2 cups of cooked black eyed peas and about 2 cups of chopped collard greens. Then, I added about 1.5 cups of barbeque sauce and heated it through. Once the mixture was heated I put about 1/4 cup of the black eyed pea mixture in the center of one of the boiled collard leaves and rolled it up like a burrito. I lined them all in a baking dish, drizzled about another 1/2 cup of barbeque sauce on top and baked them for about 30 minutes at 350.

These collard wraps are REALLY, REALLY good. Rob has always said that he does not like black eyed peas.......he ate seconds of these collard wraps!!

I made the coffee barbeque sauce from the recipe in the March issue of Vegetarian Times. However, knowing that I was serving these at dinner time, I omitted the coffee and used 1/2 of water instead. This sauce has a very strong flavor, and I can't imagine using 1/2 cup of coffee in it, I think it was great the way it was.

To go alongside the collard wraps I made the "Less Dressed Potato Salad with Fennel and Chives" from Vegan Planet. It was so good, and so easy to make. I omitted the olives and instead used a handful of rinsed capers. This was a recipe I was taste testing for our Easter meal, and it definitely made the cut!! In addition to the potato salad we also had some of the vegan cornbread I've blogged about a few times before.

And, finally, for dessert, I made Non Dairy "plain vanilla" Ice Cream, also from Vegan Planet. The recipe calls for soy milk, but we drink rice milk, so that's what I used.......I'm dubbing this treat "rice cream". I crushed some cinnamon graham sticks and sprinkled on top......YUM!! The ice cream needs a little longer to set than I anticipated and so ours was actually more like a creamy vanilla slush, but still very good.

It was so nice to actually be in the kitchen cooking dinner again. Hopefully this week will be full of nice meals to share with you all!