[TND] 9.18 Argentine-style burgers

Another recipe out of Fine Cooking (and on the web, apparently), this recipe went against my current thinking in terms of burger-crafting. It involves saute-ing garlic, onions and jalapenos, letting them cool, and combining that mixture, cilantro, oregano, salt and pepper with the ground beef. For most of the summer, I've been simply adding kosher salt as I make the patties, which both minimizes the amount of handling and gives it all the flavor it really needs. Especially if you use all natural, grain fed, additive free beef. Additional flavor and texture
can be added on top of the burger, so kosher salt is all you really need for burger qua burger. I used 90%, since it was what was on sale (and actually, the only ground beef I could find), but if I were to do this recipe again, I would definitely use at least 85%, and probably 80%. The charcoal grill requires a higher fat content, even if the additions serve to keep it a bit moister.

The burgers got put into pita pockets with sliced red onions and a chimichurri sauce, which is basically parsley, mint, oregano, lime juice, olive oil, cumin, salt and pepper. The sauce I would definitely use again, probably with less mint. I think it'd be delightful on fish.

I also made sweet potato fries. Sliced them into 1/4" sticks, coated in oil, sprinkled with salt, turbinado sugar and pepper, and roasted at 450 for about 20 min. They were pretty good, and I learned an important lesson about aluminum foil and non stick pans. I would like a way to mass produce the fries, maybe frying them would actually be faster, since there's only two oven racks and you need to single layer them.

Not sure about next week. It may be cold enough for mac'n'cheese, or it may be time to start experimenting with shepherd's pie.

[TND] 9.11 Curried Skewers

Last Tuesday was an experimental recipe that I borrowed and modified from a link off the Fine Cooking web spam I occasionally get. It involved a modified curry powder made by adding ground cumin, coriander, white pepper, paprika and a touch of cinnamon to a store curry powder. Cubed a pork loin, sprinkled with the curry mixture and let it marinate in minced garlic, olive oil and orange juice. I did the same thing with some nice tuna steaks, but they didn't get to marinate, as I didn't want to bury the tuna in the curry, but next time I would definitely let them go the distance. Salmon might work too. After letting them marinate for a couple hours or overnight, skewered them with the biggest, roundest red grapes I could find. Grill until the meat is done, the grapes should have char marks and shriveled a bit. The tuna you can let be a bit rare if it's good enough quality.

It worked much much better than I thought it would. The raisin-y but still grape-y flavor of the grapes with the hint of curry was a great transition between the curried pieces of pork. Grilling the grapes alone was pretty tasty, which was not something I'd expected either.

I also used the curry mixture on some cauliflower, after applying oil and salt, which I then roasted. It was delicious, though I need to figure out how to better distribute the curry mixture, as I had a couple bites that were almost gritty because there was too much of it in one place.

Next week is Argentinian burgers and sweet potato oven fries, I think.

[TND] 9.4 Beer Brats

I'm trying to get the most of the grill while the weather is still permissive, so tonight we'll be doing beer brats. The premise is simple. Boil brats in beer, onions and peppercorns. Grill. I am going to take suggestions from those more familiar with it as to what beer I should use, I'm thinking some sort of lager might be best. I've used ales in the past, mostly because they're what Dave had.

While we're appreciating summer, we'll do some lovely corn on the cob and some summer vegetable, probably zucchini. I may use something other than cumin to season it, as I've been doing that all summer, but it's so good it's hard to argue with. Cumin doesn't seem to complement brats all that well, however, so I'll think about it today and see where I end up.

I've got the next couple TNDs tentatively planned, I'll post that later this week.