hey guys this is Heather – I am super excited today because we're gonna make a delicious, protein & mineral packed, fresh summer recipe: Jerk chickpeas with a cantaloupe salsa – in tacos, because everything's better in tacos I've been told I'm super excited about this one, it's part of your August calendar, we're kicking off the month with these babies! Go grab your calendar, and then let's get making some tacos! We're gonna start with the jerk seasoning, and I'm starting with some very finely chopped red onion and then some allspice so I'm gonna use quite a bit of the allspice If you want, you can buy a jerk seasoning This is a jerk seasoning that I have cobbled together from various recipes around the web for it Cinnamon – or you can just use more allspice, I think that would be pretty authentically jerk
I'm also gonna do some ground thyme, although feel free to do dried because that's usually what people have I rarely get a chance to use my ground thyme in recipes – so there we go and also some black pepper I can't measure it cause I'm grinding it but put as much or as little as you want – really of any of these spices my cayenne pepper has gone moldy I just realized today when I was going to get all my ingredients our, so I am just using some chili powder
I also want to put some smoked paprika in here, but the grocery store was out and I don't have any left tragedy! I'm gonna put some sea salt in here as much or as little as you like I'm gonna put some coconut palm sugar because there is sometimes brown sugar in jerk seasoning I think this is fun, give it a little sweet a little spicy and now you can do jerk either as a dry rub or as a wet marinade, so what we are going to do is add just a little bit of olive oil here because my chickpeas are fairly dry I want this to stick to them so use a little bit of oil and now for our chickpeas! Anybody else really have a love for chickpeas? the texture is so different from any other bean and I just love it
okay best way to do this is just get messy – get your hands in there with the chickpeas make sure that lovely seasoning gets around every little bean you can try one if you want mine are so soft they're falling apart YUM that's really good so what we're gonna do now is leave this to marinate for about 30 minutes so that that seasoning can start to get in to the chickpeas meantime, we're gonna make a salsa I almost forgot the lime zest! we're going to use one lime in this recipe – the zest is going in with the chickpeas and the juice is going to go into the salsa You can use a zester my original love I just recently got a microplane so I'm trying it out it's pretty fun actually! it's definitely a finer shave, which I thought would be more appropriate with the chickpeas so it'll combine better in dishes On to the salsa, and since I have this lime sitting here we'll just juice that into another bowl, and then we'll move on to the star of our salsa which is going to be one half of a melon! So save that Scoop out the seeds, and then however you want to do this
maybe cut the skin off or maybe scoop the flesh out – whatever you prefer just get it chopped up in a dice I got this pepper at the store, I'm not entirely sure if it's a spicy pepper or if it's just a regular pepper it looks local yeah I think that's a spicy pepper okay so be careful with these they do get spicier as you go up
I learned that the hard way, if anybody remembers my gazpacho video take the seeds out and if you're sensitive to peppers don't touch the seeds with your fingers – and if you do certainly be careful to wash your hands before you touch your eyes! Before I put this whole thing in I want to taste a little bit from the top and see how spicy it is okay it's spicy but it's not unreasonable even for me so just chop this up into small little pieces you want this to spread flavor throughout the salsa so the smaller the better in that goes feel free to add less, or feel free to add more if you really like spicy things – do what suits you! More of the red onion that I used in the chickpeas Now I got a really big onion at the store, cause it was the only one that looked good
You don't need one this big You could, if you want, grill the rest of that onion and use it as a topping for our tacos so delicious! again you want to cut this as finely as possible, and the trick to doing that is leave the end on there, slice into it lengthwise – so it should kind of be like a flower – but held together here, and then you have more control in making fine little slices again do as much or as little as you like and I feel like
I'm not a huge onion in my salsa kind of person I feel like that's enough for me so I'm just gonna put that in some freshly washed parsley or cilantro – if you don't like cilantro like I don't just use some parsley, lovely full of nutrients, add some color flavor to the bowl Along with a sprinkle of sea salt bring those flavors together and then just toss it together to get some lime juice around everything
and you're gonna want this to sit and marinate while your chickpeas marinate Snd then we're gonna bake those chickpeas in the toaster oven for about 15 minutes Marinating makes for delicious meals if you don't want to cook stuff because time – as in the number of minutes that you spend letting this marinate – brings the flavors together in the same way cooking them does So the longer we let this marinate, the more these flavors are gonna merge and meld and become one delicious salsa
Now I've used cantaloupe melon you can easily use honeydew, you could use peaches, you could use my favorite – mangoes! but fruit salsa it's where it's at for the summer chickpeas have marinated so I'm gonna put them on a tray that fits in my toaster oven so I don't have to heat the whole oven up you could also do this on the barbecue on a veggie tray or a baking tray you could also fry this, but I'm trying to go for as close to proper jerk as I can, which would have been cooked over dry heat – so that's what I'm gonna do put this in the toaster oven at 350 for about 15 minutes toss them in the middle cause I've got a thick layer here Look how gorgeous those are! I tried them, they taste amazing so we are ready to set this feast out you can leave it for people to assemble their own if you like, I heated these just lightly and then all I need to do is get some chickpea goodness in there top it with some salsa, a little bit of shredded lettuce or I've used savoy cabbage because it looked really nice this week and of course nothing is quite complete without some avocado! Also one memory that sticks with me from my student exchange trip to Mexico – lime on everything Feel free to cut up another lime and squeeze the wedges on to your tacos
YUM!! hope you enjoy these jerk chickpea tacos with a fresh melon salsa on one of your summer evenings in August – or an afternoon weekend lunch picnic Be sure to pick up your calendar for August, there's a link below Leave any comments with questions or suggestions that you have for yummy delicious tacos Thanks so much for watching! We'll talk soon bye xo h
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