Vegan Chopped Challenge! Our Entry: Mediterranean Platter!

The Post Punk Kitchen is hosting a very interesting challenge right now. If you've seen the show Chopped! then you will understand but the basic gist is create a dish using these 4 ingredients: blackberries, fresh mint, blackeye peas, and bittersweet chocolate. Biggest and best difference between this contest and the Chopped! show... everything must be vegan! 


This is what we came up with: A Mediterranean Platter with blackeyed pea falafel, blackberry couscous, fresh mint tabouleh, and bittersweet chocolate hummus!

We're going to write out the full recipe for every part of the platter very soon but because there is a fast approaching deadline for the entries we're just going give you a basic breakdown of how we incorporated the challenge ingredients. 

The falafel is made from a dry mix, water, and 1 can of pureed blackeyed peas. We sauteed them in olive oil till crisp and brown and put them in the center of our platter.


The couscous was made with lots of sauteed veggies including onions, sweet peppers, zucchini, and garlic and also included some fun ingredients like raisins and orange juice. We added the blackberries once it was cooled down and man, did they add some flavor! Lightly fruity and delicious! We garnished the top with fresh mint and positioned it on the right side of the platter. 


The tabouleh was mostly fresh mint and parsley and we also added red and yellow onions, grape tomatoes, cucumber, and cracked wheat. Tabouleh is always so yummy and adding in some extra fresh mint really gave it a nice twist! This is on the left side of our plate.


The hummus was really the most fun to put together. We bought a bar of Scharffen Berger bittersweet chocolate and made our usual hummus recipe then added a teaspoon of organic sugar and a teaspoon of organic brown sugar then melted the bittersweet chocolate in our chocolate melter and mixed it into the hummus in the food processor. We saved a tiny piece from the bar and chopped it finely to garish the hummus. It's on the upper left side of the platter and might seem strange but the sweetness really adds an interesting balance of flavors to these wraps. 


We also added a blend of black and green olives a salad with romaine lettuce, tomatoes, and onions to stuff into the mini wheat pitas. 


We've been eating our "assemble your own falafel wrap platters" tonight with friends and are getting great reviews!


The whole thing took about 35 minutes to make (good thing because our limit was 40 minutes)!


This challenge was really fun to do and we can't wait for the next one! It will be awesome to look at everyone else's entries and wait for the results!


We promise the full recipes will be posted soon!


With peace, love, and compassion-
The Two Vegan Ladies