I hope you're doing great and that all your loved ones are happy and healthy 😄

December is here and, in my town, that means heavy food. So, from time to time, I try to cook lighter and healthier food to balance things out at home.

I prepared a simple tomato and vegetable soup for lunch to which I added annotated oil and coconut oil once I turned off the heat. It's a tasty meal but quite simple, ideal to accompany with a side out of the ordinary that makes the moment of sitting at the table a little more memorable.

I made this fun side dish of gluten-free plantain and oat nachos to dip in a slightly sweet pear and orange sauce, which I garnished with a handful of roasted walnuts and pistachios.

Next time you prepare your favorite veggie soup, you may want to accompany it with a little of this:

I have a few recipes for gluten-free flatbreads and crepes; plantain is definitely my favorite ingredient for my little experiments, but today it was oats which shined, as they made these nachos super light and flaky. This time, I took one of the plantain and oat crepes I had made to store in the fridge and used it to make super crispy nachos.

Ingredients

Two things to have in mind: I've used Avelina oats, which are gluten-free. Also, I've used an unripe plantain; you could use a ripe plantain to make sweeter nachos, but then you'd need an even sweeter sauce.

For the crepes (4-5 30 cm units)--Only one to make the nachos:

• 250 gr unripe plantain, peeled and chopped
• 1 cup oat flakes (gluten-free)
• 2 tablespoons virgin cold pressed coconut oil
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

For the dipping sauce:

• 2 cups ripe pear, cored and peeled; half chopped, half shredded
• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 tablespoon cane sugar
• pinch of salt

• a handful of walnuts and pistachios, roasted

Let's get to work!

My favorite recipes to share are the ones that include a blender as the main part of the process, as this makes it much easier for those who want to put it into practice. This is one of those cases: I simply put all the ingredients in the blender and let it work until the mixture was homogeneous.

Oat mixtures have the particularity of hydrating slowly; for this reason, it's important to let the mixture rest for at least 15 minutes before starting to cook the crepes.

I used olive oil to grease the pan. As expected, the oil was absorbed by the first crepe, and then I shouldn't add any more oil.

I used my faithful 15-year-old 30 cm frying pan, the one I like for crepes because I like them thin and wide.

After 20 minutes or so, the mixture was thicker than I expected, so I added a little more water. It was 2 cups in total.

Then it was time to pour the mixture into the hot pan.

Then I had to cook each one over medium heat, 3 minutes on each side.

I found it very easy to flip them, as it's a light batter.

They wouldn't stick.

I made 5 crepes. Four I kept in the fridge and took one (the last one and smaller) to make nachos.

I cut the crepe into 16 nachos.

...And baked them in the oven at 200 degrees F° for 25 minutes.

They were light and crispy.

I realized they turned lighter and crispier than the ones I make only with plantain.

We have enough nachos.

Now we need that pear & orange dipping sauce :)

I took the pistachios out of their shells and cracked them a bit, along with the walnuts. Then I baked them all at 200 F° x 10 minutes.

I washed, peeled, cored, and cut the pears. I grate half of them to get a thick sauce.

Next, I squeezed the juice of 2 small oranges and one lemon and added it all into the cooking pot.

...I also added the cinnamon stick, both the chopped and shredded pear, sugar and salt.

In order to have a tender sauce, I let it cook over low heat for 30 minutes.

Then served it still warm.

I hope you have found this recipe useful, and perhaps next time you make a veggie soup, you will try serving a fun and unusual side dish like this one 😁

Bon appetite!

All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY for all them.

Thank you so much for your visit :)

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