bean tacos with mango salsa.

I have been craving Mexican food for the past month, and for some reason I hadn't been able to get around to satisfying my craving (even though I live near 5 Mexican restaurants, off the top of my head). I finally made the decision yesterday that I was going to surrender to my craving and just make something myself... even though I didn't get around to doing so until today... Hm.

I've been trying to cut meat back from my diet, but I can't recall ever having a taco without ground beef/pork/turkey or fried fish in it. I've probably seen it on menus, but I was probably unimpressed because I was under the impression that a taco wasn't a taco unless it looked like it came from Taco Bell-- I'm kinda upset that I just admitted that.

Then I came across a new favorite food blog, The Tomato Tart, and the author Sabrina had a recipe called Sweet Potato Tacos in which she forwent using ground meat and substituted it with mashed up beans. Lightbulb! I felt like she wrote this knowing I had a spare can of beans in my cupboard (even though this was posted a week ago). I had cannellini beans instead of black beans, but I thought What the hey! Beans are beans. And as the title of the recipe implies, she made sweet potatoes the star ingredient of her tacos, but I wanted mine to put my leftover mangoes center stage since I was still obsessed with yesterday's mango and pine nut salad (which also made use of the cannellini beans! Super!!). But since I didn't want to investigate the hypothesis of fried mangoes, I decided to look up a simple recipe for mango salsa.

And voila! Bean tacos with mango salsa.

If you were to look at the original recipes, you'll also notice I altered a couple of other things simply because I was trying to work with what I already had in my kitchen. For example: 1) instead of using a teaspoon each of smoked paprika and cumin, I ended up using 2 teaspoons of cumin, 2) I used a yellow onion instead of a red one, 3) lemon juice instead of lime, although it felt like a sin, 4) and I put olive oil into the mango salsa mixture because I thought I read that...

On to the recipe!

Don't the beans kinda look like ground meat?

Ingredients:

• 1 mango, diced
• 1/2 medium-sized onion, finely chopped
• 3 tbsp fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
• 3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil + small amount to coat tortillas
• 1 tbsp butter
• 15 oz can cannellini beans
• 2 tsp cumin
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 4 corn tortillas
• Small bowl of water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. In a small bowl, combine the mango, onion, cilantro, lemon juice, and olive oil. Add in salt and pepper to taste, then set aside.
3. In a small pot over medium heat, melt butter. Once butter has melted, add beans and cumin. Mash 2/3 beans with a potato masher, fork, or wooden spoon. Add salt and pepper to taste. Once beans are heated through, turn the heat to low and cover.
4. Dunk the tortillas in a bowl of water then rub with a little bit of olive oil. Place each tortilla directly onto the oven rack and cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute.
5. Tortilla + beans + mango salsa + enjoy :)