[Molly Yeh] I'm making a big old Midwestern tractor lunch
for my favorite fella and myself.
Just the farmer I was looking for.
With my jazzy ranch and bacon grain bowls.
It looks so good!
Super fun savory monkey bread with
creamy veggie dip for dunking.
Yeah!
Crispy deep fried pickle chips.
Yum!
And for something sweet, the most beautiful giant
almond butter blossoms there ever were.
I'd be a farmer if I could eat like this every day.
Look at these beauties!
Hey, this is me, Molly Yeh This is my husband Nick.
This is our growing family.
And this is our farm on the North Dakota Minnesota border.
The place where I eat, sleep, and breathe food.
It's planting season on the farm, so I thought
I'd whip up a delicious lunch for Nick and me to enjoy
between him playing in the dirt and me dirtying up
some dishes.
For dessert, I am making my giant almond butter blossoms,
which are so satisfyingly chewy
and dense, and they've got a whole honkin' chocolate bar
in the center.
To start on my dough, I'll combine my dry ingredients.
I'll get three and a half cups of all-purpose flour.
This is a big batch of big cookies,
but Nick needs the energy for planting.
And with all the almond butter in the cookies,
you know, they're basically a protein bar.
Two teaspoons of baking soda, which will react with
the acidity in the brown sugar and just help make
these cookies really chewy and kind of crackly.
Two teaspoons of cinnamon, which complement
the almond butter really nicely.
And one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt.
Now I'll get this combined.
So these are giant versions of the peanut butter blossoms
that my mother-in-law makes with Bernie every year
around the holidays.
And typically they have those teardrop-shaped chocolates
in the center, but I'm making them big
because I wanted more of the chewy center.
And also when you use the chocolate bars versus
the teardrop chocolates, I feel like you can get
a better ratio of chocolate to cookie in every bite.
I love them so much.
For the wet ingredients, I'll combine one cup
of softened unsalted butter, one cup of almond butter.
And this is unsweetened almond butter,
so I can more control the level of the sweetness.
I'm adding a lot of sugar already.
And then one cup each of granulated sugar
and light brown sugar, so that you get a little bit
of that darker molasses-y flavor with the light brown sugar,
but it's not overpowering the almond flavor.
I'll get this onto my mixer, and then I'll mix this up
until it's combined and creamy,
but I'm not going to aerate it too much, because in the end
I want this cookie to be extra dense.
Now that it's combined, I'll add two eggs, one at a time.
Oops.
I added them both.
They're still going to be delicious.
And then two teaspoons of vanilla extract.
I'll reduce the mixer to low, and then dump in
the dry ingredients.
And I'll add them in all at once, so that I don't risk
over-mixing some of the dry ingredients
and developing gluten, and then getting not a great texture in the end.
Oh, this smells delicious. I'm smelling that cinnamon.
Before kids, I was a little bit more loosey-goosey
about eating raw eggs and raw flour,
and this is the type of dough I could just go to town on.
These days I'm quite a bit more neurotic.
The dough is done. I'll set up my shaping station.
I've got my baking sheets, which are lined with parchment,
and I've got a plate of sugar,
because I'll roll the cookie dough in the sugar,
which will help add more sweetness
and a little crunch on the exterior.
I've got a quarter-cup capacity ice cream scoop,
which is going to give you big honking cookies.
And I'll roll it into a ball, and then roll it into the sugar,
place it on the baking sheet.
Adorable.
I'll keep on scooping and rolling, and then bake
these at 375 for about 12 minutes,
until they're golden around the edges, and then it'll be time
to give them their chocolate bellies.
I'm smelling that cinnamon.
They look awesome already.
While they're still hot and soft, I've got my chocolate bars here
that I'll press right down on top.
And I'll give them a firm press, so that the edges
can crackle all around them, just like that.
And I'm using classic grocery store waxy milk chocolate here,
because it just tastes nostalgic to me,
and I do love the creamy texture.
These are looking gorgeous already.
These will go back into the oven now,
for about two minutes, so that the chocolate can melt slightly
and meld with the cookie.
I can't wait.
This is the hardest part, because now I have seen
the cookies, I've smelled them,
I've got to wait another couple of minutes.
Whew, that was a rough two minutes, but I made it.
Now we're talking.
All right, while the chocolate is still melty,
I'll sprinkle them with toasted almonds,
because it's pretty, it tastes good with that added crunch.
It's time.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. It's nutty. It's chewy.
It's sweet. It's a gigantic cookie with gigantic flavor.
Coming up, food is getting fun.
One of my favorite Kirby concoctions
has everyone eating with their hands.
For a fun, snacky side to our tractor lunch,
I am making savory monkey bread,
which is a pile of hot, fluffy dough balls that have been dunked
in butter and rolled in colorful herbs
and seasonings, and then I'm serving it
with a tangy dipping sauce that's got a rainbow
of confettied veggies.
So to start, I've got just my basic go-to bread roll recipe
that I'm shaping into 40 little balls.
But if you want to use just store-bought bread dough,
that's okay, too.
That's what my mom would use growing up.
And she did the classic caramelly sweet version
of monkey bread.
I don't know if it was big in the '90s or if she just made it
a lot in the '90s, but I associate my childhood
with eating a lot of monkey bread.
And I'm doing a savory version because I love savory foods.
I'm stretching the surface so that it's smooth and taut,
and then pinching the ends under,
and then rolling them.
You want evenly shaped balls so that they rise evenly
and bake evenly, just like that.
Ta-da!
Okay, all of the balls are rolled.
Now comes the fun part, is the assembly.
I've got six tablespoons of melted butter here,
and this will be the glue that holds on all of the toppings.
In this first bowl, I've got finely chopped parsley
and chives.
In my second bowl, I'll add some dried minced garlic
with smoked paprika.
Sesame seeds.
This reminds me of a sesame bagel.
Poppy seeds.
I'm loving this color palette already.
And lastly, some finely grated Parmesan.
Okay, to build my monkey bread, I'll roll a ball of dough
all over in butter, get it fully coated,
and then dunk it in a topping.
I'll roll it around. It's just like putting glitter on glue.
I love the way it sticks so nicely.
Like that.
And I'll pop it into the Bundt pan that's been greased,
and I'll rotate the toppings as I go so that once it goes
into the Bundt pan,
there's a pretty distribution of the different toppings.
Next, I'll do garlic.
Apparently, it's called monkey bread because
the method in which it is eaten, we pick off the chunks,
kind of mimics the way monkeys clean each other.
Yum.
Sounds so appetizing.
We should name a food after it.
Okay, I will keep on dunking, and once all the balls
are into the Bundt pan, I'll cover it up
and allow it to proof for another 30 minutes
until it's puffy.
They're so poofy poofy.
Okay, I'll bake this now at 350 degrees for about
35 minutes until it's golden, and in that time,
I'll make my creamy veggie dip.
This dip is tangy, and it's got great freshness
from veggies.
It's basically a junior high school party chip dip,
but less from a packet.
So I've got my veggies here, a red bell pepper, carrot,
celery, and scallion, and I'm giving them
a rough chop before tossing them into my food processor.
Spring planting happens at a time when all of the snow
has just melted, so the ground can be really wet
and just sloppy.
So Nick tends to come in around this time of year,
just cake with mud, it's fine.
As long as he rinses off his hands before eating the monkey bread.
I wonder how much dirt a farmer actually eats
in their lifetime.
It's how their immune systems are so high.
A little bit of parsley,
and then I'll pulse this to break it up into little pieces.
That looks good.
For the creaminess, I've got some softened cream cheese
and half a cup of sour cream to make it dippable.
A little garlic powder.
I like using this because sometimes I don't always want
to eat just chunks of raw garlic.
And salt and pepper.
The juice of half a lemon.
And now I'll bring it together so that it's dippable.
That's it.
I don't want to over blend and process the veggies
into purees.
Looks like a party to me.
All right, now to taste test,
I need something to dunk in it.
I think it's monkey bread time.
It looks so good, and it smells so good.
I don't know if it looks better or smells better.
Doesn't matter.
I'm going to go for it.
I'll invert it onto a plate for serving.
This is always the scariest part about Bundt cakes,
is getting it out of the pan. But luckily,
monkey bread is much more forgiving than a cake.
Did you hear the plop?
[gasps] Yay!
I'm so excited about this.
Oh, I love you so much.
I don't even want to disrupt it by eating it,
but I truly cannot not.
Balls to the rescue.
Here I go.
Oh, yeah.
It's buttery. It's fluffy. It's so flavorful.
This is better than a barrel of monkeys.
Next, bacon and ranch.
Need I say more?
My quick and easy lunch bowls
fill you up and make you smile.
Score.
I love a good bowl.
Noodle bowls, rice bowls.
Today I'm making a bowl that is particularly Midwest inspired,
my bacon and ranch grain bowls.
They're hearty and bright all at the same time,
and they are sure to fill anybody up
for a hard day's work.
To get started, I'm crisping up my bacon.
I started it in a cold skillet, which helps render the fat
and get it extra crispy.
While this crisps up on the other side, I'll drain my barley.
This is a chewy, hearty grain. It's so filling. I love it.
And you cook it just like pasta, just in salted water
until it's al dente.
You can really use any grain with this bowl.
I'll give this some extra love with the zest of a lemon.
It's always nice when you're making a grain bowl
to pay attention to the grains and make sure that
they're seasoned nicely.
Then I'll juice in half the lemon.
I like the contrast of the brightness against the hearty grain.
A little olive oil.
And this helps prevent the grains from sticking all together.
And black pepper.
Give it a toss.
One fun perk of living on a grain farm is that anytime
you feel like a grain bowl, you can just send a text
and say, "Hey, bring in some grains for me."
And then Nick will go out to the grain bins,
get me a bucket of wheat berries, and then I can
cook them up just like that.
This being the start of the season,
we don't have any wheat berries yet.
The barley's also delicious.
All right. This bacon is looking crispy.
I'll transfer it to a wire rack so that any excess grease
can drip off.
I'll get my other fixings and then assemble these bowls.
Let's pack some bowls.
I've got cute bento boxes.
I'll start with a bed of spinach and get some
green veggies under those grains.
And I like putting the greens on the bottom sometimes
of the grains because then, like, the juices
of the grains and everything soaks down
and dresses the greens.
Some barley.
I've got six-and-a-half-minute eggs,
which is very particular, I know, but I love the texture
because it's in this perfect middle ground
between being totally soft-boiled and hard-boiled.
So it's still gonna be oozy and the yolk will drip down
over the grains and everything.
Some bacon.
A handful of croutons for crunch.
One thing that grain bowls have to have in their toppings
is a variety.
Some crunchy things, definitely some pickly,
briny things, fresh herbs, and then, of course,
something saucy to bring it all together.
Okay, pickle time. I've got all the pickles, cornichons,
pickled onions, and pickled beets.
I didn't eat a whole ton of pickles until I moved here.
There's major pickle culture in the Upper Midwest.
Some pickled onions.
They're so pretty and pink.
Pickled beets.
Okay, I'm just trying to figure out what colors
I want next to each other.
I like seeing the contrast of the red beets
next to the cornichons.
We'll get some radishes for some freshness.
All right, I haven't added the herbs yet,
but I want to add the herbs on top of the ranch.
I'll add some strategic squiggles of ranch.
We're all about pickles and ranch.
A pinch of flaky salt and pepper.
Yeah, that's good.
And then lastly, my herbs.
I've got my chives.
I want to see the bright green herbs against the ranch.
So again, I'm kind of being strategic with the sprinkling.
And then dill.
You almost need your dill tweezers for this job.
I love a bite of dill with an egg.
These look very pretty, but I want to get the full effect
of seeing the oozy yolk with these other toppings.
Here I go.
Oh, that's a perfectly cooked egg.
Okay, well, since the yolk's broken,
I might as well sneak a taste.
Mmm.
Between the crunchy crouton and the chewy grains
and the creamy yolk and the creamy ranch,
that's a great farmer's lunch.
Yum.
I'd be a farmer if I could eat like this every day.
Still to come, the secret to getting extra golden
and crispy fried food.
If there's anything that'll bring a tractor lunch
to the next level, it's a deep fried thing.
So I'm making my deep fried pickle chips,
which are crunchy on the outside, snappy on the inside,
and way, way too easy to eat.
I'm starting with dill pickle chips.
I'll get them as dry as I possibly can,
because you don't want that brine hitting the hot oil
when they fry.
Okay, I've got flour here.
I've got egg beaten with a bit of milk for some creaminess.
And I'm going to splash in some hot sauce,
because I love a little heat with my brininess.
And then for the coating, I've got panko breadcrumbs here,
and I'll flavor it with a good couple of pinches
of kosher salt, some dried dill, just to enhance
the dilliness,
paprika for smokiness, garlic powder.
And then a little heat is a good contrast
to the bright brininess.
This is some cayenne.
I'll toss this together.
My dredging station is set up. I'll work in batches.
I'll coat the pickles in flour to help dry out
the surface so that the egg can stick.
And then get them coated in the egg.
I'm only using one hand in the egg
so that I don't create a total mess.
And then get them totally coated in the breadcrumb mixture.
Fried pickles are awesome because you get that crunchy,
deep-fried coating that you crave.
But then on the inside, they're actually kind of light and snappy.
The pickles are fully coated.
I've got enough to get a batch frying.
I have a couple of inches of neutral oil
heating to 360 degrees here.
And I'll test to make sure it's hot enough
by dropping in a breadcrumb.
And if it sizzles immediately, that's how I know that
it's ready to fry.
I'll drop them in gently, and I'll first load them
onto my spider here.
It's time for the magic to happen.
These only take a few minutes.
I'm just frying on both sides until they're golden brown.
They're already sizzling.
I'll flip them to ensure that
they're golden on the other side.
Okay, I'm getting impatient.
I'll get them out of the oil.
Oh, yeah, look at those.
Great color and great breadcrumb coverage.
While they're still hot, I'll sprinkle with a good pinch of salt.
I'll fry up the rest and then make a simple dipping sauce.
A little mayo mixed with relish and hot sauce.
Here I go.
Oh, yeah. That's a beautiful bite right there.
-[crunching] -Mmm.
It's this epic trio of briny,
creamy, crunchy fried situations.
All right, I'll pack these up and then go find a farmer.
Most likely Nick.
Just the farmer I was looking for.
I have a gigantic stack of food.
I always have an appetite.
You often have stacks of food, so we're a good match.
Grain bowl for me.
-Oh, and monkey bread. -Oh, my goodness.
These are outstanding.
I mean, you could have made a whole stack of pickle chips, honestly.
I would have been okay with that.
-That would have been a lot easier. -Yeah.
I can tell you one thing.
If it is not a great planting season,
it isn't because I was not well nourished.
-You follow that? -Thanks. Yeah. [chuckling]