Yet another bean burger recipe

Life is busy sometimes, and it means I've been ignoring the food blog... which isn't to say that I haven't been eating.

Chick pea burgers remain a staple in the home, but I've evolved the recipe.

Ingredient list:
-1 egg
-1/2 yellow onion
-2 tbsp flour
-1/2 tsp chili powder
-1/2 tsp ground cumin
-1/4 tsp salt
-1/2 can chick peas
-1/2 can black beans
-extra light olive oil
-1/2 cup greek yogurt
-1 tbsp tahini
-juice from 1/2 lemon
-1/4 cup thinly sliced celery heart
-sliced beefsteak tomato
-4 whole grain half-pita pockets

Pre-heat a cast iron skillet to just higher than medium heat. Use enough olive oil to coat the entire bottom of the pan.

Throw the egg, flour, salt, spices, and onion into the food processor. Mix until it's a gooey paste. Then dump in the chick peas and black beans and pulse a few times to get a coarse mixture. Mixture should make four patties. Fry in the oil for a few minutes on each side. Thanks to the onion, the patties may start to look almost black. Trust me, they're fine... they actually taste a little better that way. Crispy fried onions and chick peas are wonderful.

While the patties are frying, mix the yogurt, tahini, celery heart, and lemon juice in a bowl to make the sauce for the patties. Lately I've been using the very core of the celery heart for this... it's thin enough and the celery flavor isn't quite as strong, and it's the part of the celery bunch that I never really know what to do with anyway.

Serve in pita with a slice of tomato, and the yogurt sauce. Lately we've been buying the pita from Costco... it's a little smaller, so there's less leftover bread... and, it's cheaper.

Half a can of beans, half an onion, etc... I don't really leave half of two different cans of beans and half an onion  typically, I do a second batch to provide lunch for the next day. I usually let it fry while we eat the first batch.

Simple pasta and steamed veggies

It's pretty impressive that this dish hasn't made it on here already. I chalk it up to the effect that this blog has had on our kitchen. I'm trying a lot of new things and cooking a lot of new recipes. And writing about it, of course.

This is a quick and simple dinner that we've been enjoying for years. It was something I threw together one night out of sheer hungriness and a need for FOOD. While it's very simple, it does require a steamer basket that nests into the top of your regular saucepan, and use the same lid. It's not hard to find a setup like this when you're shopping for pots and pans. And I recommend the combination to people precisely because of this recipe. It's a serious production time saver.

Step 1: Chop up some vegetables into bite-sized hunks and throw them in the steamer basket. For this recipe, I used 2 heads of broccoli, a bundle of asparagus, and an onion.

Step 2: Fill the pot 2/3 with water. Don't overfill, as the steamer does take up some space in the saucepan, and it will displace the water onto your stove. (Note paper towel on the stove)

Step 3: Put the steamer on top of the pot, and the lid on the steamer.

Step 4: Turn on the stove and heat up the water for pasta.

Step 5: Throw in the pasta, and cook.

Step 6: Take the stack to the sink, and dump the pasta on top of the veggies in the steamer to strain.

Step 7: Dump the steamer into the serving bowl.

Step 8: Drizzle olive oil over everything, and move the pasta around enough to let the oil keep it all from sticking together. Serve with Salt, Pepper, and maybe some Romano or Parmesan.

As the water heats up to boiling, it warms up the veggies, and they steam while the pasta's boiling. When the pasta's done, the veggies are done. No muss, no fuss.

It's really amazing what the simple combination of oil, salt, and pepper can do for steamed veggies. And the cheese is salty enough to chime in pleasantly. Years ago I used to mix in goat cheese and cream and other stuff. But I've been trying to eat better lately, and I have to say, in this case, simpler is really better.

There are other veggie combinations thatare worth trying, like:
-zucchini, chick peas, and shallots
-Broccoli, Cauliflower, and summer squash
-Red peppers, spinach, black beans, and apples
-Use your imagination. Vegetables are vegetables, and some mix better than others, but almost all are good.

Chick Pea Burgers

Tonight I was digging through the folder of recipes I've cut out of magazines, and found one that came from Eating Well, for chick pea burgers with Tahini yogurt sauce. Among the ingredients: chick peas, lemon juice, tahini, and olive oil. All of these are found in hummus, which is half of Ariel's answer to the "one food for the rest of your life," question.

(Hummus and Tabouleh, mixed together, are Ariel's favoritest thing. Ever.)

So, already it sounded like a winner.

Update, 11/18/10: In the month since this was originally posted, this recipe has become a staple meal in our home. As a result of getting a lot of practice with this recipe, I've learned a few things, and edited the entry to reflect those lessons.

Ingredient list:

Chick Pea Burgers
1- can of chick peas, rinsed and drained. (I used to use 19 oz cans, I've since used 14 ox cans without changing anything else, and it works fine.)
4- scallions, trimmed and sliced
1- large egg
2 Tbsp all purpose flour
1 Tbsp chopped fresh oregano. (I used dried from a jar.)
1/2 Tsp ground Cumin. (I love Cumin.)
1/4 Tsp Salt. (Or a heavy pinch, if you don't feel like washing a little pygmy spoon)
2 Tbsp Olive oil. (Bullshit... will explain later)


Tahini Sauce
1/2 Cup- greek style lowfat plain yogurt
2 Tbsp tahini. (Sesame seed paste, you may have to look a bit to find it, but I've been able to find it at supermarkets that I didn't think would have it.)
1 Tbsp Lemon juice. (I just squeezed out a whole lemon.)
1/3 Cup chopped parsley. (More or less. I think mine ended up with a lot more than 1/3 of a cup.)
1/4 Tsp salt. (See above commentary on pygmy spoons.)

Other
2 pita bread pockets, sliced in half lengthwise (Ha... it's circular. You figure out which way is lengthwise...)
1 Beefsteak tomato, sliced

The egg, scallions, salt, flour, cumin, and oregano go into the food processor with the chick peas. Use the pulse feature, and make a coarse mixture that will form patties well.

edit: Having done this a few times, I can say that it's better to mix the egg, scallions, salt, flour, cumin, and oregano first, and then add the chick peas into the food processor. I used to dump all of the other ingredients on top of the chick peas, and it took a lot longer for those other ingredients to stir down into the mix properly. By the time it was all more or less homogeneous, it was halfway to being pureed. This way the other ingredients are mixed to form the glue that holds everything together, and mixing the chick peas from there results in a coarser mix, and better patties that handle more easily.

For the sauce, combine the sauce ingredients in a bowl and mix with a fork. It's not rocket science.

Next step, make patties with the chick pea mixture, and fry them at medium high in a frying pan, in the olive oil. Be careful when flipping them, as they will come apart pretty easily.

In the ingredient list, the quoted quantity of EVOO is 2 tbsp. This is bullshit, and you should pay it no mind. A more liberal application of oil is required, to help conduct the heat to the patties. For those of you who have a cast iron skillet that can handle 4 patties, I suggest you use it, as cast iron holds heat very well. It's a minor thing, really... frying these things up wasn't hard, but I do have a reason for thinking this.

Generally, I find that foods that are allowed to heat up more gradually do not get that crispy-fried crust on the outside. I've had friends that cooked falafel in aluminum pots, or with not enough oil, and the result was a mess. The aluminum conducts some of the heat away, and the falafel dough (if that's the proper term) cools the oil down even more if there's not enough oil in the pot to compensate. So, the oil didn't stay hot enough to make the falafel balls crust over, and the result was lumpy cooked chick pea paste, in oil.

Using a cast iron skillet to fry these up makes a WORLD of difference. Instead of the slowly building sizzle that I'm used to with our old aluminum and stainless frying pans, the patties start to sizzle the instant they hit the pan. And this instant-frying makes a much crispier outer crust. As a result, I've discovered I actually need less oil.

The patties are served up in the pita pockets with the sauce, and a slice of tomato. Extra pita can be used to help clean up the extra sauce that's typically left over.

This was probably one of the fastest, easiest things to make that I've cooked in a while, and it was really, really good. We'll be making this one again.

One very happy nursing student.

Rapid-Fire Salad

I've been a woodworker for a few years now, and in the woodworking world, there's a split between machine woodworking and hand-tool woodworking. And somewhere along the way, I realized there was a similar thing at work in the kitchen. (Woodworking has really colored the way I see a lot of things.)

In short, machines are used for sheer productive capacity. Hand tools are used when a little bit of finesse is desired, when the quantity called for doesn't justify cleaning an entire machine, or when you feel like taking your time and enjoying the process. I like the process of breaking things down and slicing ingredients... there's something for me about working with my hands that allows my head to unwind itself a little bit.

When it's time to produce, one of my favorite machines is the food processor. I don't have a full-sized one, yet, but I've had this mini Cuisinart for something like 13 years now. It's still going strong, and despite it's size it's a solid workhorse. The only hand tool required with a food processor is a knife, to trim off any undesirables, and break the rest down into manageable chunks.

UPDATE-- 9/16/10: Apparently I'm not the only one who really likes his food processor. Check out this column from columnist Mark Bittman in the New York Times

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Growing up, the typical salad involved large chunks of lettuce leaf, raw tomatoes, oil and vinegar, and other large chunks of raw vegetables that are the typical anathema to a bouncing screaming holy terror of a child. So I grew up hating the idea of salads in general. I've grown up a bit, and my ideas of what can possibly constitute a salad have been broadened considerably. Among other variations, I was introduced to the concept of so-called 'Israeli Salad,' which is synonymous with "doesn't have lettuce." For some reason, this really appeals to me, and it really opens up the genre to a lot of possibilities.

There are times when I feel like making a really fancy-looking salad, and I'll take the time to carefully slice ripened pears on top of an arranged bed of... whatever... and add nifty things like nuts, craisins, and cheeses, and so on, and so forth. That takes time, room to spread out and prep all the ingredients, and at least a mild level of engagement. Tonight I was just hungry.

I fed some celery, apples, carrots, and red cabbage into the Cuisinart. I mixed up the result, dumped some of it on top of a pile of spinach, added some craisins and balsamic vinaigrette, and called it dinner. I used the slicer on the celery and apples, and the shredder on the carrots and cabbage.

Please note that this processed part of the salad is very dense. Carrots and Cabbage are serious roughage, and shredding it will help with the process of digestion, but it also allows it to compact very tightly in the salad bowl. So be aware that what you see in the picture above is going to last for at least 2 or 3 meals, and attempting to eat all of it would be the gastronomical equivalent of eating a box of brillo pads. 

Normally for salads I like to use pears, if I have them, instead of apples. Pears are sweeter, and I like the way that the sweetness counter-balances the bland earthiness of most lettuces and some other vegetables. I also like combining pears with something like gorgonzola in a fancier salad, but I'll make one of those at a later date.