burger recipes – Blue Kitchen

Mushrooms marinated in soy sauce, brandy, garlic and Chinese five-spice powder replace half the lamb in these burgers, for a healthier, umami-rich and satisfyingly meaty meal (and yes, you can substitute ground beef for lamb). Recipe below.

Tom Robbins advises us to “Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets.” I’m not sure if I do the first and I’ve only in the last few years started doing the last, but I nail the one in the middle. Sports and actuarial tables aside, pretty much everything interests me, and I want to know more. I have what I call a magpie eye, always ready to latch on to some shiny new thing.

Which leads me to another quote—one of my favorites—by one of my favorite photographers, Walker Evans: “Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.” I’ve said here before that I’m not a great cook. But curiosity makes my good cooking better than it might otherwise be. Continue reading “More umami, less meat: Mushroom Lamb Burger” →

Weeknight quick to make, turkey burgers get a flavor boost from hoisin sauce, green onions, ginger, garlic, soy sauce and a topping of Sriracha mayonnaise. Recipe below.

There are Sundays that lend themselves to giving in to indolence, lounging about and doing nothing more ambitious than occasionally stirring a pot that cooks for hours. This past Sunday was not one of those. We spent much of the day hiking around the National Restaurant Association Show in the cavernous McCormick Place (motto: “You’ll love our 2.6 million square feet of hard concrete floors”). Then, because we apparently hadn’t walked enough, we did a little more hiking along Chicago’s lakefront.

After a day of walking and grazing on various delicious, mostly fatty foods (more about the restaurant show next week), we wanted a dinner that wasn’t a fat bomb, but still delivered big taste. And personally, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on my feet in front of the stove. These Asian turkey burgers were just what we needed. Continue reading “Big flavor in a hurry: Asian Turkey Burgers with Sriracha Mayonnaise” →