Black Bean Street Tacos with Tropical Fruit Salsa

Ingredients:

• 2 teaspoons cooking oil of choice

• 1/4 cup diced red onion

• 1 cup cooked black beans (about 1 can drained and rinsed)

• 1 teaspoon cumin

• 1 teaspoon chili powder

• 1 teaspoon soy sauce

• 2 cloves pressed garlic

• 1/3 cup diced pineapple

• 1/3 cup diced mango

• 1/4 cup diced red bell pepper

• 1/4 cup diced tomato

• 1/2 lime zest and juice

• 1 minced jalapeno pepper (remove seeds and membranes if less heat preferred)

• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro loose

• Salt to taste

• 2 corn tortillas per taco, about 12 total

Directions:

1. Heat oil in a small saucepan. Add onion, beans, cumin, chili powder, soy sauce and garlic and cook over medium heat until hot, about six to eight minutes.
2. Combine diced pineapple, mango, bell pepper, tomato, lime, jalapeno, cilantro and salt in a medium-sized mixing bowl and set aside.
3. Warm tortillas if desired and then lay flat for taco assembly. (Use two tortillas per taco if desired.) Top each tortilla with ⅙ broccoli slaw, ⅙ black beans, and ⅙ fruit salsa. Enjoy!
4. (The black beans and fruit salsa can be made in advance and stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to one week. For best results, assemble tacos just before serving).

Let me preface this by saying finding a tropical recipe when you’re vegetarian and allergic to coconut is … a nightmare.

I found this delightful recipe on Grateful Grazer and it sounded good enough to try.

I got together with our deputy photo editor Carolynn Clarey to make these because she is a much better cook than I am. I’m great with desserts but only so-so with regular foods.

Unless my mom is reading this, in which case I am a phenomenal cook.

For the recipe, we used vegetable oil as our cooking oil and corn tortillas for our tortillas. As far as I’m concerned, corn tortillas are the only real tortillas and everything else is a sinful imitation.

We used canned diced pineapple and canned diced mango because a whole pineapple was too much for the two of us and all the mangoes in store were under-ripe.

The beans take longer to cook than the recipe suggests. We heated the oil, cumin, chili powder, soy sauce, garlic and onions on their own before adding the beans, then cooked for an additional 15 minutes.

The greatest advantage to having an additional set of hands was being able to make the bean mix and the salsa at the same time so they came together at the right temperatures. If you’re home for break, maybe ask your parent(s) or sibling(s) if they’d like to make this with you.

Overall, this is a sweet and yummy recipe for a lunch or light dinner.