cozy braised chickpeas with squash

Blogging on a Saturday night?? It’s like I’m back in college again! Only this time as soon as I post this I am entering a pillow fort and only resurfacing when it's time to go to brunch tomorrow, not going uptown to drink boozes at Kyle and Sam’s house and then coming back downtown and eating Gray’s Papaya hot dogs, ketchup and kraut please, Brian do you want my papaya juice?

The truth is I’ve been in recovery mode from summer camp all week, and on Wednesday when I meant to post about braised chickpeas I had a big long flight and got distracted by watching I Feel Pretty.

Summer camp was off the hook!!! We put as many foods on walls as possible and used a record amount of sprinkles. We served cinnamon rolls with tahini frosting, bougie bug juice (watermelon, mint, a.c.v., salt, fizzy water), pan pizzas, breakfast sandwiches, and vats of late night beer cheese. And I had my annual summer camp Uncrustable and it was still a little frozen but totally perfect. I also led a 90s themed cookie cake making workshop and was tasked to make marzipan boobs. A first for me! But I think I did ok?? Out of all the boobs in the world surely they looked like some of them.

Now I’m racing to the finish line of 5778 and planning my Rosh Hashanah menu. Our apple trees are looking good, the potatoes are ready to be dug up, and the squash miiiight be there?? My current menu draft is this but it will probably change because that’s just how I operate:

Potato challah
Matzo ball soup
Grilled honey chicken
Some charred corn situation
A green thing
Apple and marzipan crumble

But I want to also share with you these braised chickpeas that we’ve been enjoying on these newly cooler nights and that would make a delightful vegan main course for your new year's feasts. The concept is simple: make the same braising liquid you’d make to braise a brisket but instead of using brisket, use chickpeas and squash. Hence the name I originally gave this: Brisket Braised Chickpeas! It's like how chicken fried steak doesn't actually have chicken in it. We are braising chickpeas à la brisket, with red wine, fresh rosemary, delicious home smells, and all. Ultimately, having "brisket" in the name of a vegan dish sounded confusing. But never mind that. Potatoes or parsnips in this would also be good. And this is best enjoyed out of a bowl with a large hunk of bread, torn from the loaf, and I believe it would ring in the coziest of new years!

Shana Tovah, friends!!!

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cozy braised chickpeas with squash

serves 6

1/4 c olive oil 

1 large onion, chopped

2 large or 4 small carrots, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 tsp kosher salt

1/2 tsp cayenne

Black pepper

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 c dry red wine

1 small butternut squash, cubed

1 (14 oz) can tomatoes

2 c veggie broth

2 (15 oz) cans chickpeas, rinsed

2 sprigs rosemary

2 bay leaves

chopped fresh parsley, for serving

hunks of bread, for serving

Preheat the oven to 350ºf.

In an oven-safe dutch oven or cocotte, heat olive oil over medium, until shimmering. Add the chopped onion, carrots, celery, and a pinch of salt and cook until soft, 10 to 12 minutes. (Alternatively, you can work in a non-oven safe pot and transfer your mixture to an oven-safe dish when it's time to move to the oven.)

Add the cayenne, a few turns of pepper, and the garlic and cook another minute, until fragrant.

Add the red wine and cook until it's reduced by half. Add the remaining ingredients, give everything a stir, and cover.

Transfer to the oven and braise for 2 to 3 hours, until the chickpeas are soft. Discard the bay leaves and rosemary sprigs, top with parsley, serve with bread, and enjoy!

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-yeh!

photos by chantell and brett quernemoen

cumin chickpea salad tacos with chipotle tahini

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. 

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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! 

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-yeh!

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

chickpea flour matzo ball soup

Passover is right around the corner! Do you have your menu planned out yet?? It's ok, neither do I. Luckily i'll be spending my holiday with mum and stoopie this year, so I'll let them do the menu planning and then just appear when it's time to eat matzo balls and hide the afikoman (otherwise how will I know where to look when it's time to find the afikoman???).

I have to tell you about these matzo balls! They're from Lindsey's beeeeeautiful new book, Chickpea Flour Does It All, and they are made with--you guessed it--chickpea flour instead of matzo meal. So they're completely gluten-free and they are so gosh darn similar to the real thing. I gasped out loud when I tasted them the first time. They are a bit lighter and fluffier than the matzo balls of my youth (the kind I ate **ravenously** after even the most condensed of seders), but boy are they good. And they come together so easily with just a few ingredients. Lindsey plops them into veggie broth and serves them with roasted carrots (I've been dying to try Izy's carrots with black garlic) and I made these last week with a ginger lemongrass broth for a nice little mashup sitch. This weekend I might have to go the classic route with my favorite roasted vegetable stock. 

Anywho, check out Lindsey's book! It has her signature breath-taking photography that I love so very much and it proves, through cakes and pizza and matzo balls, that chickpea flour really is a renaissance man of an ingredient. It also came out with perfect timing since 2016 is the international year of pulses! p.s. have you signed the pulse pledge (aka a commitment to eat more pulses this year) yet?? If not, get to it! 

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chickpea matzo ball soup

from lindsey love's chickpea flour does it all

makes 18 matzo balls

ingredients

1½ c (180 g) chickpea flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
3 large eggs
3 tb extra virgin olive oil
6 c (1,440 ml) vegetable broth
2 tb chopped dill

clues

In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper, to taste. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs and oil until just combined. Make a hole in the center of the flour mixture and add the egg mix. Fold together with a rubber spatula until thoroughly incorporated; the batter will be very thick and sticky. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 hours.

Fill a large lidded pot three-quarters full with water and bring to a simmer. Place the broth in another large pot and bring to a simmer, cover, and turn the heat to low.

While the water is heating, remove the matzo ball batter from the refrigerator; take about 2 teaspoons’ worth of batter (roughly 20 to 22 grams) and, with wet hands, roll the dough between your palms to make balls. Bring the simmering water to a boil. Gently drop half the matzo balls into the water; when the balls rise to the surface, turn the heat down to a simmer and cover the pot. Cook for 20 to 22 minutes, until the matzo balls are cooked through and the centers are light. If the center is hard and dark, cook for another 3 to 5 minutes, until the center is cooked and light. Transfer to the warmed broth, and repeat with the remaining matzo balls.

Bring the vegetable broth and matzo balls to a simmer. Serve one to two matzo balls per serving; garnish with dill.

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-yeh!

Thank you so much to USA Pulses and Pulse Canada for sponsoring this post! 

recipe: chickpea spätzle with shallots and collard greens

you're all in so much trouble for not telling me how good the carrie diaries is. (it is good, right?) since i finished season one of orange is the new black i've been swimming in bedtime story loneliness because there are only so many passable made-for-tv christmas movies. 

i have scotch eggs to make this week. and potstickers. the kinds of things that i can't have distractions for, so part of me wishes that i had saved my discovery of the carrie diaries until next week when i make the long ass trek home (!!!). 

in other equally as exciting news, i combed my dreadlocks out! actually eggboy did. on friday, i tried to curl my hair, and when i found myself wrapping one massive dread around the curler, i decided enough was enough. and it was good timing, now that i don't have to wear my hair up to work at the bakery every day.  

it was a swell way to spend our extra hour yesterday. (how did you spend your extra hour?) 

eggboy is good with that kind of stuff... combing out dreads, tolerating girlie tv shows, helping me with my dirty donut dishes even though he's probably never eaten a donut. his generosity makes me want to reciprocate with gluten-free goodness. i'll substitute all the all-purpose flour in the world for a few good dread-combing sessions. 

so today in gluten-free goodness: chickpea spätzle.

chickpea flour is one of my favorite gf flours. it's so versatile and it adds a great new depth of flavor. it's also very healthy!  

soon, i'll need to do a gf schnitzel to go with this. 

chickpea spätzle with shallots and collard greens 

makes 2-4 servings 

ingredients 

olive oil

2 large shallots, chopped

2 large leaves of collard greens, stemmed and cut into ribbons

1 1/2 c chickpea flour

salt and pepper, to taste

a pinch of nutmeg

1/2 c milk (i use almond milk) 

2 eggs 

chili flakes, to taste

clues 

in a large pan over medium low heat, heat a bit of olive oil and add the shallots. blanch the collard greens by placing them in a large pot of boiling water for 2-3 minutes. remove them with a slotted spoon and then add them to the pan with the shallots. keep the water boiling for the spätzle.

turn your attention to the spätzle, but keep an eye on the pan so that the shallots don't burn (turn the heat down to low if needed). 

in a medium bowl, whisk together the chickpea flour, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. in a separate bowl, whisk together the milk and eggs. whisk the milk mixture into the flour mixture.

using a rubber spatula, press the batter through a slotted spoon or a colander (or a spätzle maker if you real fancy) and straight into the boiling water. boil for 2-3 minutes, drain, and then add to the pan with the greens and shallots. 

toss with a bit more olive oil, add the pinch of chili flakes, and then more salt and pepper if needed. cook for a few minutes and then serve with schnitzel or all on its own.

-yeh!