Blog posts I started to write and (thankfully) didn’t publish today:
• Why I think you might be an idiot
• Here, let me beat you down with logic
• I don’t care that humans are inherently illogical, I WILL DROWN YOU IN REASON ANYHOW
What can I say, I have a wickedly sore shoulder and a hearty case of didn’t sleep well last night.
But! What I also have is an incredibly tasty lunch. Let me share the recipe with you!
This is my new favorite burger recipe. It sounds like it will please no one, since it has too little meat for the carnivores and too much meat for the vegetarians, but I’m pleasantly surprised with how much I love it every time I make it. Perhaps you will be too.
Meat-and-Grain loaf, burgers, balls
adapted from Mark Bittman’s Food Matters
• 1 lb lean ground beef
• 1 lb raw spinach leaves (blanched, drained, water squeezed out and roughly chopped – feel free to skip this by just buying a packet of frozen spinach and thawing)
• 1 onion chopped fine
• 2-3 cloves garlic pressed, grated or chopped fine
• 2 cups cooked grains (I like it with Millet best, but barley or brown rice also work well)
• Cumin (to taste)
• Cayenne (to taste)
• Salt (to taste)
• Pepper (to taste)
• 1 egg
Put everything in a bowl. Squish about gently with fingers until evenly mixed.
Form into a loaf (in a loaf pan), burger patties (I make 8 large patties with this recipe) or balls of any size.
Bake at 400 F until done (about 30 minutes for burgers)
I love this, because it’s got some extra veggies in it, but still tastes really meaty. The grains soak up the meat-juice as it bakes, so the patties stay moist and the flavour permeates everything.
Try it out! And tell me if you like it. I will probably be much less grumpy by then.
I copied that recipe from your cookbook last time I was there, and tried it a few weeks ago. I couldn’t get the darned stuff to form patties – we made it into a very crumbly meatloaf instead, which tasted very nice. What the heck am I doing wrong?
Perhaps another egg? Also, they never hold together perfectly well, and do require a bit of a gentle touch when making burgers. But still tasty!