cumin chickpea salad tacos with chipotle tahini

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hello from chicago! i have been floating in a sea of family and friends, some of whom i haven’t seen since my limited too body glitter days, some of whom i didn’t recognize until they mentioned my elementary school. most of whom have more facial hair (if they’re dudes)… it’s so bonkers to see all of these old homeslices and sign their books! it really makes me want to smile my whole face off and hug the guts out of them. i hope i didn’t spread any cooties though, i’ve been chugging mum’s matzoh ball soup and just had my first wheatgrass shot (ew), so i think i’m on my way to being 100%. i’ve also been getting better at coming down off of the wired feeling that’s leftover after each book event. bojack helps (should i start a bojack blog?), and so does this great book that i’m reading, searching for john hughes. it’s a new memoir by jason diamond, who grew up right near me in the chicago suburbs, and reading it is like receiving letters from a good old friend that i’ve known for a million years. i love it and 10/10 would recommend.

speaking of the suburbs, i am heading deeper into the suburbs today, to lake forest for my second of three chicago book tour events. and tonight i’m going downtown to the cso! i can’t hardly wait.

Since it is Tuesday, we should think about tacos. This recipe has become a staple supper in our house. It began its life as a greek salad that I tested for Lily’s forthcoming book, Kale and Caramel, and Eggboy and I became so obsessed with it that we started having it literally every third day. Lily Salad! Lily Salad! Over the past few months, it’s evolved to fit our taco obsessed lifestyle and adapted to accommodate the ingredients that we commonly have on hand. Olives were swapped out for radishes, pita croutons were swapped out for the amazeballs tortillas from this small factory in moorhead, minnesota, and a load of mint was swapped out for whatever sad small amounts of mint we can get our hungry hands on. (At one time over the summer, mint was plentiful from my little plant. But when all of that died and it just couldn’t be found at any of our groceries, I got sad. And around this time I broke into Lily’s apartment in los angeles while she was on a date, and when she returned she had a bush of fresh mint the size of two of my heads. oh wow! is there a farmers’ market today?? i asked, pointing to her mint. no, this is literally the smallest quantity of mint that i can get from [insert generic grocery store name here]. *eye roll* *california* *ugh*.) I also started adding tabasco sauce because I feel weird not having tacos with classic tabasco sauce, and I thought that chipotle tahini would be a fun twist on chipotle mayo, giving it a nice creamy texture and some smokiness that brings these cumin chickpeas to the next level. 

cumin chickpea salad tacos with chipotle tahini

makes about 8

ingredients

Olive oil or flavorless oil
1 15-oz carton chickpeas (drained, rinsed, and patted dry)
ground cumin
ground coriander
Salt and pepper
original Tabasco sauce

5 oz mixed greens
1/2 purple onion, thinly sliced
1/2 large cucumber, chopped
4 radishes, thinly silced
A handful of fresh mint leaves, or more if you've got it
A handful of crumbled feta

1/4 c tahini
3 tb cold water
1 tb lemon juice
1 tsp chipotle tabasco, or more to taste

about 8 six-inch flour tortillas

clues

heat a thin layer of oil in a skillet over medium high heat. add the chickpeas and cover them with a dusting of cumin and coriander, a big pinch of salt, and a few turns of pepper. cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally, until they begin to brown. remove from heat and top with a few shakes of hot sauce. 

in a large bowl, combine the mixed greens, onion, cucumber, radishes, mint, and feta. 

in a small bowl, mix together the tahini, water, lemon juice, chipotle tabasco, salt, and pepper and stir until thickened. taste and add additional tabasco, if desired. 

warm the tortillas in the pan you used to cook the tortillas in (so the seasoning gets on one side), and then fill them with a pile of salad, a spoonful of chickpeas, and a healthy drizzle of chipotle tahini. alternatively, you can toss the chickpeas and the tahini sauce with the salad before stuffing everything into a taco.

enjoy! 

 

-yeh!

thank you, tabasco, for sponsoring this post! check out the #tabascotastemakers hashtag for more tabasco recipes!

coconut tahini monster cookies + a mega giveaway

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you know what i would pay a good $26 for these days is like a 4loko-circa-2010 + emergen-c hybrid that actually tastes like matzo ball soup and is three ounces or less but fills you up way more than that. there would be a boozy version for nights and weekends and a non-boozy version for the weekday and it would be available at all of the airports, even the two-gate grand forks airport. there would be coconut water in it too, for hydration. 

really what i want is the ability to power through the rest of this book tour with the immune system of a kindergarten teacher and the energy of ellen bennett. 

and the dance moves of maddie ziegler. 

i just get so excited when i see all of my homies during my travels that it’s hard to be like “no, i can’t go sunrise wine tasting with you, matt and beau and katie, i have to sleep in and then do ab exercises like the boring lame jane that i am.” so i don’t. and then i end up with a strep-ish throat underneath a blanket cape and a winter hat on an airplane on yom kippur, day-dreaming of disgusting alcoholic energy drinks that taste like matzo ball soup. it’s all obviously worth it. i had so much fun giggling with matt and beau, cheering on katie during her chopped episode, eating nik’s lamb around a bonfire, and discovering the cuteness of boise with the delicious contents crew these past few days… what a cute little town! but i also wish i had small pouch of energy reserve that i could kick into high gear for chicago this weekend that wouldn’t require me to take any time off from fall recipe testing today and tomorrow.

what do you do when you’re about to get sick? 

  1. vitamin c
  2. whine
  3. tweet about matzo ball soup and hope that the town matzo ball soup factory sees it and sends over a lifetime supply of matzo ball soup
  4. power through it, go to the club, only invite friends that agree with your theory that vodka is the best way to kill the germs in your throat

i know what this darktown blog post needs, cookies and a bigass giveaway!

as you might have seen on instagram, the day molly on the range came out also marked the beginning of a hanukkah-length giveaway that features super amazing kitchen gear, apparel, spices, and surprises that were featured in motr. so many of my favorite companies were massively generous in sending props for the book photo shoots, so i’m taking this time to showcase some of them and send their amazingness to one lucky winner. that winner will receive:

the Stanley lunchbox that i packed pizza pockets and celery soda into for the pizza night on the tractor shoot. and the Faribault cape that i wore for it.

the Staub casserole featured on the tater tot hotdish page.

a selection of some of my favorite La boite spices, including the za'atar that can be seen on the back cover.

the Vermont Farm Table cake stand that's on the cover and in a few other places throughout the book, like the princess cake pictured above.

the Shun knife that's pictured with the tahini blondie ice cream sandwiches.

the Lodge mini cake pan from the mini peach bakewell tarts that were ultimately cut from the book (nooooo!!!) but that cake pan remains one of the cutest things in my kitchen. 

...and a surprise box of goodies from me that will totally include some tattoos, a stick of chocolate halva lip balm, a signed book, some other cookbooks that came out this fall that i love, maybe just like a full on sugar beet? and secrets!!! it'll be like summer camp but better because we don't have to sneak in candy under a pile of tampons.  

to enter this mega giveaway, tag your molly on the range instagrams (a photo of the book or a dish that you’ve made from the book) with #mollyontherange and #8daysofgiveaways throughout the month of october. a winner will be chosen at the end of the month, and this is open to u.s. residents.

and now let’s talk about cookies!!! i first made these in los angeles over the summer, in my measuring cup-less kitchen. they’re a combination of samantha seneviratne's new chocolate chip cookies, which i love because they are coconut oil based which means you don’t need an electric mixer (and they have nuts and coconut in them!), and dani’s tahini chocolate chip cookies which i love for obvious tahini-centric reasons. these guys have a party of flavors and are quick as a bunny to make. they’re soft, chewy, and nutty, and if you don’t have measuring cups and have to eyeball all of the measurements, they’ll likely still be pretty swell. even if they fall apart and you have to sprinkle a bunch of broken cookies over ice cream.

coconut tahini monster cookies

makes 10

ingredients

1 1/4 c all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp kosher salt

1/8 tsp of cinnamon

1/2 c melted virgin coconut oil, slightly cooled

1/2 c tahini

1/2 c granulated sugar

1/2 c brown sugar

2 large eggs

2 tb vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste

optional: splash of coconut extract

3/4 c bittersweet chocolate chips

1/2 c toasted walnuts, chopped

1/2 c flaked unsweetened coconut

flaky sea salt, for sprinkling

sprinkles, optional

clues

preheat the oven to 350ºf and line two baking sheets with parchment. combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in a medium-sized bowl. 

in another bowl, combine coconut oil and tahini. whisk in sugar until well combined. add in eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition, then mix in extracts. finally, stir the flour mixture into the tahini mixture along with chocolate chips. 

scoop cookie dough onto lined baking sheets with and ice cream scoop, leaving a few inches between them for the cookies to spread. top the dough with walnuts, coconut, flaky salt, and sprinkles if using. 

bake until the bottoms are lightly browned and the coconut is toasty, begin checking for doneness at 15 minutes. let cool on the pans for 5 minutes, and then remove to a rack to cool completely, or eat them warm! enjoy! 

roasted butternut squash soup with almond ricotta and coconut bacon

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whoa, book parties are like weddings! everybody is sooooo nice and you get to schmooze until your face feels like it's gonna fall off, and when you you can no longer stand upright in your party shoes or speak clearly because you were singing sia as aggressively as sia herself, you and the other late-night survivors go sit in a booth at your old old standby in korea town to eat kimchi pancakes and bulgogi. and then the next morning even though you're still kind of full from kimchi pancakes all you want is a plate of greasy eggs with cheese and hot sauce and squishy bread, and by gum, it is good.

it's peak amazingness paired with hurty feet and exhaustion, and i wouldn't have had it any other way. 

my book tour has officially begun, but i am home now! for about 72 hours before lift off to boise, and it is so cold here. which is good because for a while last week it was too warm to harvest the beeties. and then it poured, so it was too rainy to harvest... as crazy as this past week was for me in new york, it was even crazier for eggboy because this harvest is one of the most insane it's ever been, apparently. the fields are so wet and eggboy is constantly having to stop to clean mud off of the harvester. oyoyoy. it's a good thing we have a freezer full of soup!

before i left for new york, i made a very large pot of squash soup from ali's new book, inspiralize everything. it is so perfect for this weather right now. it gets a beautiful creaminess from coconut milk (it's vegan!) and has just a bit of spiciness. it's officially one of my very favorite squash soups and i couldn't have discovered it at a better time because our garden is bursting with butternut squash. in ali's book, she adds spiralized apple noodles to this soup, but for this run, another of her squash recipes inspired me--it paired butternut squash noodles with coconut bacon and almond ricotta. ok: coconut bacon is good!!!! my knee-jerk reaction to most fake meat is negative, but i recently bought some coconut bacon and it's so good, sweet, and addictive. it's like smoky candy. i'm so glad i know how to make it from scratch now since when it's store bought it's like a million dollars. so this recipe is a combination of two of ali's recipes and it screams **autumn** in every single way. and it's perfect for sukkot, which is right around the corner! yay!!!! go, ali!!! 

roasted butternut squash soup with almond ricotta and coconut bacon

makes 4 servings

adapted from ali maffucci's inspiralize everything

clues

for the almond ricotta:

in a high-speed blender or food processor, combine the soaked almonds and water. puree until mostly smooth, with some texture but no large chunks remaining. place a fine-mesh strainer or colander over a bowl and line with cheesecloth. add the almond mixture and drain for 8 hours. discard any liquid that collects in the bowl. transfer the ricotta to it and season with salt, pepper, and the herbes de Provence.

for the soup:

preheat the oven to 425ºf. line a baking sheet with parchment paper. put the butternut squash cut-side up on the prepared baking sheet and drizzle the inside of the squash with the coconut oil. rub it in with your fingertips or a brush. season with salt and pepper. flip over the squash and bake for 45 minutes or until the flesh is easily pierced with a fork. let cool for 5 to 10 minutes or until cool enough to handle. use a spoon to scoop out the flesh and transfer it to a bowl, discarding the skin.

while the squash cooks, heat the olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. when the oil is shimmering, add the shallot and cook for 3 minutes or until softened. add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds or until fragrant.

transfer the shallot and garlic to a high-speed blender. add the squash, nutmeg, chili powder, broth, coconut milk, and salt and pepper to taste and pulse until creamy, about 1 minute. taste and adjust seasoning to your preferences.

for the coconut bacon:

preheat the oven to 350ºf. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 

in a medium bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, liquid smoke, and tamari. add the coconut flakes and stir to coat. season with salt, then spread the coconut flakes over a prepared baking sheet, spacing them apart. bake for about 10 minutes.

divide the soup among four bowls and top with pepitas, ricotta, coconut bacon, and more pepper.

ingredients

for the almond ricotta:

2 c raw blanched almonds, soaked in filtered water overnight, rinsed, and drained

1 c filtered water

salt and papper

1/2 tsp herbes de Provence

for the soup:

1 large butternut squash (about 3 pounds), halved lengthwise and seeded

1 tb coconut oil, melted

salt and pepper

2 tsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 small shallot, minced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/8 tsp ground nutmeg (just a pinch)

1 tsp chili powder

2 c low-sodium vegetable or chicken broth

1 (15-ounce) can lite coconut milk

for the coconut bacon:

1/2 tb maple syrup

1 tb liquid smoke

1 tb tamari or reduced-sodium soy sauce

1 c unsweetened coconut flakes (not shredded)

salt

for serving

1 tb roasted and salted shelled pepitas

pepper

-yeh!

molly on the range is out!

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it's out! it's out! molly on the range is officially--after 2 1/2 years of thinking about it and doing things about it--out. and i'm so happy it is because it's allowed me to do all these fun things this past weekend, like babble on the radio and hug all of my new york friendsies and eat hummus every single day. i've had such a swell time here, and it's only just beginning because tonight is a party and tomorrow is another one and the next day i have a flight later in the day so guess who's gonna do a tequila shot on wednesday night, me. it's me. 

how does it feel to have a book out, molly?? is a question i've gotten a few times and the answer is usually "like i need a red bull habit" or "grrrrrreat!" and then i'm like, huh, that's kinda dumb. let's analyze this further. so here's how it feels:

1. it feels like a million bucks! i get to schmooze with all you people and also have a conversation topic that is more fun than the weather, less scary than the election, and fulfills one requirement to pass the bechdel test. and i have tattoos to hand out! my five-year-old cousin put them all over her belly, it was the cutest gosh darn thing. 

2. it feels like i kinda want to do it again? like i've forgotten all of the pain and insanity and wouldn't really mind another large project to think about now that i know that i can actually complete a large project. i mean, maybe it'll be a book project, maybe it'll be raising a goat or a pig, but a book sounds less muddy. and i feel like even in the time since i submitted my manuscript, my tastes have changed and i've discovered so many new ingredients that i want to play with. like preserved lemons, i could never imagine writing a book these days without plastering it with preserved lemons. and yet there are none in molly on the range.

3. cool and good and great and all of the positive feelings. i've had so many scrapbooks and moleskine diaries throughout my life, and this is just like that but bound nicely and illustrated and, as the kids say, legit. i am so happy with it and so excited to share stories that go deeper and weirder than my everyday banter on this here blog. 

so i made a cake about it. i was going to make one layer of every cake from the book and stack them on top of each other, but then i counted them and that would have been 13 (thirteen!) layers, and structurally i'm just not confident in that. so this is a "greatest hits" cake. speculoos, vanilla cardamom, chocolate tahini, sprinkle, and pistachio. it was good, we ate it at the little pizza party that i threw for my grand forks and fargo friends who helped with the book. eggpop dug out the whole chocolate layer and futureeggbrother (did i mention eggsister got engaged??!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) dug out the whole pistachio layer. i love watching people getting physical all up in my cakes.

all of these cake recipes are in the book! but, if you're looking for some recipes today, here are some that my very good blogger friends have made from the book in the past week or so!!

lily made coconut malabi with persimmons (!!!), a genius seasonal variation since the one in the book has roasted rhubarb. and also she made me nostalgic for our "camp" days.

dani made mac and cheese and took this insanely stunning ingredient shot that i'm obsessed with. i love how real it is, how all of the ingredients look like they were pulled straight from the fridge and *just woke up that way*. 

matt and beau made mandel bread and answer the question "what even is mandel bread!?" perfectly. and made me even more excited about going on a trip to boise next week, because i just found out they're coming!!!! what should we do in boise, friends??

stephanie made burger slider cakes and added cake fries and a shake!!!!! i had such a cute attack. i screamed.  

sonja and alex made fried rice and have me pretty much convinced that i should road trip out to indianapolis right after my third chicago event. right?? right. 

alexandra made mandel bread for dorie greenspan's #cookiesforkindness project, which is so sweet!!!! (sidenote: i met dorie yesterday and she is such a gem!!) <3 <3 alexandra's family miiight have eaten them all before she could share, hehe, it's ok i would have too. 

shelly made mac and cheese and made a reference to amelia's notebook that hit the nail on the head!! amelia's notebook was such an inspiration for me and i am so happy that molly on the range shows it. 

cynthia made fried rice and i just loved seeing this dish through her amazing styling eyes. it's such a simple dish that i had to reshoot a couple of times for the book because rice is hard to photograph! but cynthia made it look soo beautiful. 

alana made a scone loaf and added sprinkles! because she knows me better than i know myself. and then she and her man took that loaf to europe! knowing that i am playing a part in the plane snacks of my close friends makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside. 

have a great week, everybody!!!! 

-yeh!!