Cooking vegan with RawSpicebar Argentine kit!

I was sent these yummy Argentine spices from Rawspicebar, so I decided to make some Argentine inspired vegan dishes for lunch and an Argentine inspired outfit to go along (couldn't help it, this is a fashion blog after all ;) 

Rawspicebar is a spice kit subscription service that sends you three freshly ground spice blends every month ($8 a month) that have a region or cultural cuisine inspired theme. They often have chefs that specialize in that cuisine to help create the spice blends, so you get some pretty top notch blends. What I really love about these spice kits is that they take you out of your comfort zone and let you explore another world through food. You not only get to play around with new dishes but you also gain more knowledge about a place you maybe knew nothing about. 

So for this kit I got the three spice blends above- the chipotle sea salt, dark coffee and chiles and sun dried tomato pizza. When I saw the pizza blend, I was surprised at first but then after reading the description card you learn about the strong European influences- Spain colonized Argentina and they also had massive waves of immigrants from Italy and other parts of Europe, so its all mixed up! I decided to make a home made pizza with the sun dried tomato pizza blend and got to work rolling out some dough I bought from trader joes (no one got time to make dough- or maybe one day I'll learn). Here's me rolling in the dough, I mean rolling the dough haha!

There was one spice blend, the coffee chili rub that is traditionally done on steak but it is easily veganized by replacing it with a veggie or even tofu or tempeh. Rawspicebar is great because they have so many recipes on their website for each spice blend and they cater to all food lifestyles. I decided to make a salad and I thought it would be fun to use the coffee chili rub on portabella mushrooms and make a traditional Argentine chimichurri sauce as the dressing. This idea was inspired by some of the recipes I saw on Pinterest while researching Argentine food. You can actually check out my Pinterest board I put together for this post- including the fashion inspiration behind my outfit here. 

So I got to work on this dish by marinating the mushrooms. I used soy sauce, the chipotle sea salt from the kit, some thyme and the dark coffee and chiles blend. I let them sit in the marinade while I made the pizza.

Made a quick cashew mozzarella style cheese to put on the pizza. You can get the recipe I used for this here. It's basically blended soaked cashews (overnight) with garlic, some nutritional yeast, some of the chipotle sea salt, apple cider vinegar and some of my Ener-G mix which has the secret ingredient- tapioca starch that makes a gooey texture. Then its whipped on the stove until it becomes a solid form. But check out the video to see how to make this plant based cheese that is really easy and yummy and much healthier!

I put together the rest of the pizza, adding the delicious sun dried tomato pizza blend into the sauce and sprinkled some on top of everything too. I know this is a more greek style pizza but I was really craving some olives and red onions.

While the pizza was cooking, I put the mushrooms in the pan and let them simmer under medium heat. I then got to work on the chimicurri sauce. This stuff is so yum as a dressing! Its just a bunch of cilantro, parsley, onion, garlic, lime juice and more of the chipotle sea salt all blended up.

And here's the finished dishes! YUMM!!!!!!! 

As you can see I was very impressed with what I made!! As someone who hated cooking a few years ago, I've finally embraced and now ENJOY IT! I owe most of that to being vegan and just really connecting with what I put into my body and how it makes me feel.

I hope you try some of these dishes out or are inspired to make something using some of these ideas. If you're interested in getting yourself a Rawspicebar kit or subscription, they are offering a $5 coupon with code feda5.

XO

Disclaimer: Rawspicebar kindly sent me this spice kit but I only accept and review things that really resonate with me and the things I feel passionate about. I was not paid for this post, and all that was written is my own words. Thanks for stopping by :)