Vegetable and Bean Tostadas

I don’t know about you, but in our household, cookbooks tend to languish on their shelves, gathering dust and all but forgotten. Our recipe inspiration comes from the net, from pinterest and other food blogs and digital versions of the magazines which we used to receive, but ultimately let our subscriptions lapse because they ended up sitting unread in towering stacks in the corner.

Call it a resolution, of sorts, to pay more attention to my beloved cookbooks. To use them and abuse them to the point where their pages are sticky and splattered and stained. Because (as a cookbook author myself) I know the amount of work that went into creating them, and they deserve more than just a spot on a shelf.

Take, for instance, America’s Test Kitchen’s The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook. I received a review copy months ago, and, due in part to our extra packed fall schedule, the book just sat there, untouched. For months.

I don’t know what prompted Taylor to pick it up a few weeks ago. I was struggling to put together a meal plan for that week, frustrated that I always have to do it on my own, and likely whining that he needed to contribute more and find some G-D recipes (ok ok, so I probably wasn’t the nicest wife at that point in time. I’m working on that.)

Whatever the reason, the book was there and he picked it up and immediately found a few recipes from the book for the week’s meals. That was maybe one month ago. In the weeks since, we’ve made at least a half a dozen of the recipes in the book, and Taylor has firmly declared it his favorite cookbook of all time. We like it so much, in fact, that we bought a few more copies to give away as Christmas presents.

These pinto bean tostadas are just one of the recipes we’ve tried from the book, and dare I say our favorite recipe so far (though Taylor has easily another 20 recipes bookmarked that I’m sure will be equally as good).

Despite being vegetarian, the dish is packed with protein and flavor, color and character, and is easily one of the best things we’ve made in quite some time. We would have never thought to use pickled jalapeños in a dish like this, nor use the juice from the jar to season the beans and slaw (brilliant).

Read the Rest —Vegetable and Bean Tostadas

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