Tamale Pie

I am still working my way through the Healthy Heart Handbook. This particular recipe caught my eye because it was called "Instant" Tamale Pie. Here is the caption from the book:

"After a hard day's work, come home, spend five minutes preparing this, take a shower and enjoy a complete meal"

Well, that is something I can get excited about. The hardest part of this recipe was deciding what types of vegetables to use as my "1 cup of steamed vegetables" in the recipe. I asked a friend for advice and he said "I don't know, what is tamale pie?". And at that point I had to come clean... I had no idea. I just liked that the cookbook had told me it would take 5 minutes and then I could take a shower. That is really the extent of the thought that went into the selection of this dinner!

So we got the rest of the ingredients out and put them on the counter so we could imagine what types of vegetables would be good mixed in.

The result?


Peppers!

So I steamed up some frozen peppers just long enough to de-frost them and mixed everything together:


The mix is basically some vegetarian chili, corn, salsa, and peppers. And then a cornmeal crust.

Into the oven for 30 minutes and then you have this:


This was a great dinner, especially since I didn't know what to expect. This cookbook has always impressed me and I have been happy with all the results.

As a matter of personal taste, I didn't love the cornmeal on top. I am not sure if I have ever had a cornmeal topping before, and if I have it was a long time ago. I think I expected it to taste like cornbread on top, and that is not what it was. But knowing that, I would make this again. It was super easy to pull together and didn't require any chopping which was a big time saver. I generally like to make meals out of fresh produce, but this was sort of a fun treat.