It's a smart ground beef substitution, and it's nuts
When I was a kid, ground-beef tacos were on my mother's regular dinner rotation. Any time-stressed cook knows why: All she had to do was quickly fry up some ground beef, grate some cheese, chop an onion and set out bowls of all those plus some salsa, sour cream and taco shells, and let her kids make their own.
Is there an equivalent vegetarian taco filling, something just as easy and satisfying? I think I've found it: coarsely ground and heavily spiced walnuts, whose crumbly texture resembles that of ground beef. I swear I put this together as quickly as Mom used to in West Texas, and without even applying heat.
The filling is raw - in fact, it's a thing in vegan cooking circles - and requires nothing more than to be quickly blitzed together in a food processor.
You could sprinkle it on a salad, fold it into an omelet, use it as a soup garnish or scoop it up with any vessel besides a tortilla, if you want.
I ate it just as intended, on soft corn tortillas with fairly simple toppings. But the next time I make this, I think I'll go back to my roots and turn those tortillas into crunchy taco shells. In the interest of time (and mess avoidance, no doubt), Mom always bought hers at the store, but that's not how I roll.
• Joe Yonan is the Food and Dining editor of The Washington Post and the author of "Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook."