Cosy Cooking: Jacket Potacos

The jacket potato. The love child of a jacket potato and a taco. A taco-stuffed potato, if you will. You’re welcome.

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Song suggestions:

• La Bamba - The Mariachis

• Oye Como Va - Havana Mambo

Recipe makes 4 Jacket Potacos

Ingredients:

Jacket potatoes:

• 4 jacket potatoes

• Olive oil

Tofu mince:

• 400g firm tofu

• 5 tbsp nutritional yeast

• 2.5 tsp Italian herbs

• 1.5 tsp smoked paprika (I prefer it not hot smoked but if you like a good kick to your food then use hot smoked!)

• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

• 2.5 tbsp olive oil

• Generous sprinkle of salt

Toppings:

• Sour cream/crème fraîche

• Shredded lettuce

• Pico de gallo (1 red onion finely diced, 300g cherry toms quartered, olive oil, salt, pepper and parsley)

Recipe:

1. I follow the BBC Good Food method for cooking jacket potatoes: rub some olive oil on the skin of each potato, place in a baking tray and cook at 200° for 15 minutes. Lower the heat to 180° and cook for 45 minutes, turning the jacket potatoes over halfway through.

2. Tofu Mince

   1. Squeeze as much liquid out of the tofu as possible.

   2. Mash to a scramble in a pan. Add the olive oil and on a medium heat mix until well coated. Stir for a few minutes.

   3. Add all the seasonings, mix until everything is well coated and stir the tofu in circular motions to separate all the pieces.

   4. Keep on stirring - you’ll notice the tofu should start to form little balls, like mince! Cook for about 20 minutes until the mince is a dark brown colour and slightly crispy on the outside.

3. Make the pico de gallo.

4. When the jacket potatoes are done, take them out and cut a cross about halfway down the potato. Squeeze the potato from the bottom to open it up.

5. Serve with a dollop of crème fraîche or sour cream, shredded lettuce, the pico de gallo and the mince! Voila: jacket potacos.

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A Bite Out of Life

Moving into halls this year has been so much fun and I’ve been so lucky to completely by luck be almost entirely surrounded by fellow vegetarians and vegans. We’ve got a lot of overlap in our cupboards - lots of soy sauce, peanut butter, constantly a fair few boxes of tofu in the fridge and an envious spice collection. But before any of us got to do a proper food shop to buy all of this, we were living off the essentials. I spotted the top of our fridge looking like this, entirely coincidentally… great minds clearly think alike! No brownies points given to anyone that guesses what our nearest shop is.