The first time Ellen and I had real loaded nachos was in an amazing vegetarian cafe in Montreal.They were perfect, cheesy and loaded with the best salsa and fresh ingredients, mums! Where we are from (the Netherlands) nachos exist, in most cases, of tortilla chips with melted cheese only, so you understand how elevated we were to see nachos on a menu in a super cool restaurant AS A MAIN DISH! I remember we took a photo and posted it online with the caption “Nachos are of course dinner!!” or something like that, because wow, they are definitely dinner! We often regret that we did not go to that restaurant more than once!
Ever since, we have been dreaming about those nachos and have tried many times to recreate them. Although all of them were very delicious (what can go wrong with nachos!) we have never had them so good as in that cafe in Montreal...
This also means we still crave those nachos basically every single day but since it is not the most healthy dinner, we often don’t make it or feel bloated after we do decide to make it (which is way too often). This is kind of a shame and we thought it was about time for some healthified nachos.
The nachos we came up with are not made with chips but we roasted some thinly sliced sweet potatoes until crisp. We loaded them with all the ingredients we like best on nachos, including a cashew sour cream, which you can substitute for normal sour cream or creme fraiche but when we decided to make healthy nachos we went all the way, which included making all the healthy toppings! This is a version of nachos you don’t have to feel guilty about eating every week (and it won’t give me a bloated belly from all the chips and cheese).
If you feel sad about the fact that we left the cheese out, we were thinking the same thing before we tasted the final result. These sweet potato nachos do not need cheese to be super delicious. We suggest trying it without cheese before judging, but of course you can roast them in the oven with some cheese if you must (add the cheese 10 minutes before the sweet potatoes are done cooking).
Sweet potato nachos
For 2
2 Sweet potatoes
1 tbsp Oil
Salt and pepper
Mango & avocado salsa
Half a mango
1 Avocado
1 tsp Chilli flakes
1 tbsp Olive oil
Tomato salsa
2 Tomatoes
Handful coriander (cilantro)
Half an onion
1 Garlic
Cashew sour cream
1 cup of Cashews, soaked overnight
1 Lemon
For serving
Radishes
Spring onion
Coriander (cilantro)
Lime
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees (390 Fahrenheit). Thinly cut the sweet potatoes and mix them with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Layer on a baking tray. They should not touch each other in order to get them crisp. Bake for 30 minutes or until crispy.
Meanwhile make the tomato salsa. Add all the ingredients to a food processor or blender and blend shortly until everything is finely chopped (but not a smoothie yet). Season with salt and pepper to taste.
For the cashew sour cream, add the cashews to a food processor and add the juice of 1 lemon. Blend until you have the consistency of sour cream, adding water or more lemon if necessary.
For the mango and avocado salad, slice up the mango and avocado in 1 cm pieces and add together in a bowl. Add the olive oil and chilli flakes and mix.
Once the potatoes are done, layer them on two plates. Add a little bit of both the salsa’s and the sour cream. Top off with a few sliced radishes, spring onion, some extra coriander and a quarter of lime to squeeze on top!
*If anyone is in Montreal we definitely recommend going to Lola Rosa (http://lola-rosa.ca/site/)
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