No. 4: Cooking through Home Is Where the Eggs Are by Molly Yeh
A bucolic farm life, mini cheese balls, and lots and lots of tahini
Back in November, while testing recipes for a cookbook I’m editing, I made a pumpkin chocolate babka. We ate half of it, froze the rest, and forgot all about it until I came across this recipe in Bon Appetit for babka cereal. I adore any recipe that creatively repurposes or, better yet, entirely transforms leftovers, and this one is inspired. It’s absolutely the easiest thing ever, and you end up with what is essentially homemade (chocolatey, in my case) Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Genius. And so it went: my first ever encounter with Molly Yeh.
I was previously aware of Molly, a hugely popular cook with two bestselling cookbooks, twelve seasons of her own TV show on Food Network, and 850,000 followers on Instagram. But I’d never made her food or watched her show, and after the Babka Cereal Enlightenment, my curiosity was piqued.
For February’s “book to cook,” I chose Molly’s second cookbook, New York Times bestseller Home Is Where the Eggs Are, which came out in September 2022. I tested 13 recipes from the book and I watched several episodes of her show, Girl Meets Farm. After all that “research,” I get her appeal. Molly’s recipes are straightforward, and, basic as it sounds, she seems like a genuinely good, kind person. Her TV show about life on a farm in North Dakota provides a kind of escapism. It’s bucolic and charming, showing a simpler way to live that many people dream about but will never pursue themselves. She’s also as Midwestern as it gets, and I imagine people who live or grew up in the middle of the country appreciate Molly’s energy and might feel some kinship with her. She’s certainly easy to like.
The High-Level:
Home Is Where the Eggs Are is Food Network star Molly Yeh’s second cookbook. Her first, IACP award-winning Molly on the Range, was a spinoff of her blog, My Name is Yeh, where she shares recipes and stories about her life on a North Dakota farm. That book’s success led to her TV show, Girl Meets Farm, now in its twelfth season. Molly has two small children; this second cookbook is another helping of what she’s known for, but with a focus on cooking for a family.
One Random Thing I Loved:
Girl Meets Farm is a bit twee for my taste, but I found the writing in Home Is Where the Eggs Are to be pretty entertaining. Recipe headnotes are filled with funny stories and quips. For example: Molly’s idea for an app called Soup of the Day that enables users to live a “soup-forward lifestyle.” Her description of the Pickle Dip Grilled Cheese as the “grandchild of [her] favorite drunk food in town.” Or this line: “If Chinese Hotdish is my stripper name and Busy Day Hotdish is a fantasy version of myself who juggles it all perfectly while looking very hot, then Funeral Hotdish is my indie band name in which I live out teenage dreams of playing pop music on the marimba.” I mean, funny, right?
The Recipes:
As a Midwesterner with Chinese-Jewish heritage, Molly offers a unique assortment of dishes. In HIWTEA, recipes range from Classic Tot Hotdish to Doughnut Matzo Brei to Moo Shu Chicken. Molly also seems to really, really like tahini … tons of tahini in this book.
Here are all the recipes I tried this month, in order of what I’m most to least likely to make again, with notes:
Turkey, Brie, and Cornichon Sandwich: YUMMERS. An elevated everyday sam that you can easily put together during your workday if you have a few mins to spare. Use a mild brie and a croissant instead of bread.
Rainbow Couscous Salad with Chickpeas and Feta: Easy, healthy, hearty. Filling salads like this one—with pasta, potatoes, or beans instead of leaves—are the best work lunches because they’re satisfying and keep you full longer, and they hold up for multiple days so you can prep them ahead. This was a titch under-seasoned, so next time, I’d add more salt along the way.
Bagel Salad with Roasted Salmon: Andrew’s favorite dish of the month. The mini cream cheese balls rolled in everything bagel seed mix were a revelation. Next time, I’d cut the onions thinner (a mandolin would come in handy here) and add capers.
Babka Cereal: This should be more of a thing. Will 100% make again the next time I have leftover babka.
Cheesy Kimchi Fried Rice: The sleeper hit! When we make rice, we usually make a double batch and fry the leftovers with veggies and eggs as a next-day lunch option. This was basically the same thing, but with the addition of kimchi and melted cheese on top—a new-to-me combo that was surprisingly tasty. A good winter meal when fresh veggies are harder to come by.
Jam-Filled Sprinkle Cookies: These cookies brought me a lot of joy, mainly because of how they look. Rainbow sprinkles = happiness! They tasted good too. Filling the dough with jam was a finicky process, but mostly worth it. I’ll make these again for a special occasion.
Crispy Skin Salmon with Salsa Verde: A simple recipe for stovetop salmon with an herby sauce should be in everyone’s cooking arsenal. If you don’t already have a recipe like this in your repertoire, go ahead and add this one. The sauce is the star.
Smoothies: I liked these smoothies more for the inspiration they gave me than for their taste. They made me excited to mix up my usual and experiment a little, though I doubt I’ll replicate any of them exactly.
Orange Blossom Dream: 5/10, because the peanut butter overpowered the other flavors. The second time I made it, I used less than half the PB called for, and it was better. 7/10.
Strawberry Rose Halva: 7/10, not bad but not particularly memorable, a very mild taste. Love the addition of cauliflower, which is such an easy/smart way to sneak in more veg without altering the taste. (The other two smoothies included spinach and carrots, which do the same thing!)
Blueberry Cashew Cookie Smoothie: 8/10, my favorite of the three.
White Bean Pizza Hot Dish: Baby’s first hot dish! We ate this for dinner and two subsequent lunches—it was a lot of food and very filling. Nice to have a big one pot meal that can be made ahead (I prepped it on Sunday and cooked it off on Monday night, though you could also freeze it for much longer). Perfect if you have a family to feed.
Turkey Spinach Meatballs (a.k.a. The Family Meatball): Pro: The fennel seeds gave these meatballs good flavor. Con: The mixture was really wet and didn’t hold together well, so the balls broke up a fair bit in the pan. I’m a diehard fan of Julia Turshen’s turkey meatballs in Small Victories, so I probs won’t be making these again, but I’ll borrow Molly’s idea of adding fennel seed because that was really tasty.
Grapefruit Amaretto Sour: We had a surplus of citrus that needed eating, thanks to a three-month grapefruit subscription my mom got us from Crockett Farms. (Sidenote: This is *the best* gift.) I wanted the grapefruit to be the star of this drink, but it was overpowered by the almondy amaretto and sugary maraschino juice. It was fun to try a new low-ABV cocktail, and Andrew liked it, but it was too sweet for me.
And here are five more recipes in the book that I didn’t get to this month but am eager to try:
Goat Cheese and Dill Baked Eggs
Stovetop Yogurt Mac and Cheese
Preserved Lemon Pappardelle with Fried Pine Nuts, Zucchini, Mint, and Feta
Rhubarb Shrub
One! Chocolate! Cupcake!
That’s a wrap on Home Is Where the Eggs Are. Merci, Molly, for a month of good eats!
I’m SO excited for March’s book pick: We’re doing Indian-ish by Priya Krishna. It’s a cookbook I’ve always wanted to buy and try, because 1) I love Indian food, and 2) it got a lot of hype when it first came out in 2019. Although it’s not new-new, it’s new to me, and I can’t wait to dive in. I hope you’ll follow along!
xo,
Claire
I had her book in my hands yesterday while thrifting, but forgot about it as I started wandering in the store. This makes me want to run back out to buy it, if it's still there!