real bagels are boiled

National Burger Month 05/11/2011: Inside-Out Salmon Cheeseburgers

2011-05-11T20:58:00.000-07:00

Oh man. Too much beef. I don't know if I can keep on doing this. But I'll do it today at least. Today I decided to do salmon because... too much beef.

I've done inside out cheeseburgers before, with beef and lamb. Conceptually, the inside-out salmon cheese burger is similar. It's two patties of meat that I use to sandwich a little bit of cheese. For this sandwich, I take some grilled salmon basics and turn them into a burger.

Stuff:

1/2 pound salmon fillet (pin bones and skin removed, so I'm left with slightly under 1/3 pound)

1 tbsp dill, chopped

2 tbsp Philly cream cheese, softened

salt

pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

I chopped the fillet into manageable cubes and processed them in a food processor, pulsing until it was chopped but not liquified. Into the fish I mixed the dill, and some salt and pepper to flavor. I formed two patties, and layered the cream cheese on top of one of them.

After this, I covered the cheese up with the other patty and patted everything together until I had one cohesive fatty patty. I then massaged it with the olive oil, softly and gently, and oh so lovingly, so that when it went on a medium hot grill, it wouldn't dry up too much.

Fish doesn't take as long as beef to cook, so after just 2-2 1/2 minutes I flipped it over and cooked the other side for the same amount of time. If you do it properly, this thing wouldn't leak too much. I'd imagine if you do it incorrectly, you'd have no cheese left inside the burger because the Philly, it just runs when it melts. Yuck.

You can do what you wish with your fatty patty of salmon. I topped mine with tomato and microgreens, and had it in English muffins. Oh, yes.

National Burger Month 05/10/2011: Ugh

2011-05-11T20:55:00.000-07:00

Had to take a break today. Exhausted.

I did have one of em grocery store fish burgers to prepare...

National Burger Month 05/09/2011: Veggie Burger with Beef Topping

2011-05-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

This is a veggie burger from Trader Joe's:

This is a little under 1/4 pound of beef chuck that I have massaged with salt, pepper and worcestershire sauce:

This is a veggie burger resting on a bed of beef: (I had to slice off parts of the veggie burger so that it would fit in its bed)

This is a veggie burger, resting on a bed of beef, with beef topping:

And this is a surprisingly terrific burger, one of the best I've had this month:

Really, this was a revelation. I was expecting it to just okay, but I can't believe how the good it tastes. I think it's because the Trader Joe's veggie burgers are spiced a little bit (I think I taste cumin and garam masala) and those really set the beef off. Also, the texture was terrific. Some veggie burgers tend to mush up when cooked, and they mushed up nicely here and kind of kept the burger perfectly moist. If only I didn't feel like I just ate two burgers at the end of the night. Ugh.

National Burger Month 05/08/2011: Lamb Burger with Harissa and Yogurt

2011-05-08T21:32:00.000-07:00

Mmm lamb. Cute lamb.

My original plan was to recreate my döner kebab burgers from three years ago. Instead, with a bowl-ful of ground lamb instead of strips of lamb sirloin, tonight's burgers were an adaptation of one of my favorite recipes. The basic components are similar: lamb, harissa sauce, yogurt, pita and a few greens. Preparation is also identical.

Stuff for the burgers:

1/2 pound of ground lamb

1/2 large onion, pureed

salt

ground black pepper

I started with pureeing half an onion in my food processor. In the pureed onion, I mixed 1/2 pound of ground lamb. I salted and peppered this and set it aside for two hours.

In the meantime, you can read a book, watch some Netflix, and make the harissa sauce.

Stuff for the harissa:

2 tomatoes, sliced in quarters

2 tbsp crushed chili flakes

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbsp caraway seed

1 tbsp cumin

1 tsp salt

All of this I mixed together in a food processor and salted some more to taste. This was set aside and can probably keep for a week in refrigeration.

Other stuff to top the burgers:

Some yogurt

Some salad greens

Some more tomatoes

The burgers were grilled for 3 1/2 to 4 minutes each side in medium to high heat. Patties are enveloped in pita bread, topped with yogurt, the harissa and some salad.

And that's it. Mmm lamb. Cute lamb. Tasty lamb.

National Burger Month 05/07/2011: On Repeat

2011-05-08T21:16:00.000-07:00

Nothing major today. I had a new burger planned, but it will have to be delayed because for lunch I decided to do a repeat of the previous night's chorizo burger with pico. As a result, I was incapacitated for the rest of the day. Had to skip a real dinner and was content to have just some yogurt and dried fruit.

National Burger Month 05/06/2011: Chorizo Burger with Pico

2011-05-07T10:32:00.000-07:00

I was originally going to do this burger on the fifth of May, for obvious reasons, but I ended up getting my act together the day after. This was inspired by a comment my cousin Jon left on my Facebook page about a burger he made for a bunch of his friends.

My chorizo burger uses about a 50-50 blend of grass-fed beef chuck and chorizo bought from one of the many local Mexican groceries in Santa Cruz. Seasoning was simple; I used just a little salt and pepper. For his burgers, Jon used Goya chorizo, and I can't even imagine how that would taste. The burgers were grilled over medium heat in the old barbecue.

I topped my burgers with a little pico de gallo salsa, which I talk about here on a previous Cinco de Mayo burger. I can't believe that was 2008. For 2011, I left out the avocado.

Extremely pleasing. But the chorizos-- I think they wreak havoc on the tummy, if you know what I mean.

edit: I also slathered on some Philly cream cheese on the burgers after grilling. Could've used farmer's cheese, but the Philly was such a good contrasting saltiness to the spiciness of the burgers. So creamy, so good.

National Burger Month 05/05/2011: Taqueria La Cabaña

2011-05-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

I post now for the sake of the two or three people who read my blog, hoping that they did not think I gave up on Burger Month. Not yet.

I was planning to make a burger on the fifth, but a friend asked if I could go to dinner, presumably to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. So I agreed to go out after ensuring that there would be burgers wherever we went. We ended up at the Taqueria La Cabaña on Mission Street in Santa Cruz.

I regularly eat at Cabaña. I think they make a good mole. I think it's great on their chicken enchiladas. I also think they make a really delicious Frankenstein's Burrito, which they call the California burrito, which is your basic super burrito with your choice of meats, and has sour cream, cheese, rice, beans and french fries, inside the tortilla. It is wonderful.

Since I am attempting a burger a day for this month, I ignored all my regular dishes and went for Cabaña's bacon cheeseburger with fries platter. I think it was a delicious burger. The beef patty was probably the frozen store bought variety fried on the taqueria griddle, so there was nothing too special there. I was hoping that the burger, fried as it was on the same griddle they use to fry their other taco meats would be infused with the flavors of carnitas, but alas I didn't get any of that. They did use a nice sesame seed roll and topped it with the usual suspects-- lettuce, onion, tomato. Condiments built into the burger were mustard and mayo. But no ketchup. And I think it worked better this way.

All in all, it was an above average diner-style burger. The bacon was crisp, as was the lettuce. The slice of American cheese, however, could stand to have been meltier. Other than that, I was pretty pleased.

Below is a picture that does the burger a little disservice. I did not have a proper camera with me.

National Burger Month 05/04/2011: The Basics

2011-05-04T21:56:00.000-07:00

Every year since I've done Burger Month, I've ended up with a burger recipe that I deem my burger standby. In previous years, they've been simple (just the grass fed beef chuck with salt and pepper) and they've been a little spicier (shown in the link, underneath a layer of prosciutto).

But I think one of the best parts of burgers are that while I could go all out and do something with ground lamb, topping it with a bunch of feta or something, in the end the burger is just as good in its basic utilitarian unit. There is something to be said about the efficiency with which one can prepare a great sandwich, with the least amount of prep work.

In any case, my go-to standby burger, since last year is a simplification of the spicy burger that I linked to above. I lose the siracha (still what I believe to be the king of hot sauces) and the garlic powder this time, and leave it with just a little more spice than burger with salt and pepper. I've turned to this recipe for the greater part of the past year and I think it's done well.

Stuff for one burger:

1/3 pound grass fed chuck (always the grass fed)

a couple of turns of the black pepper mill

a couple of pinches of kosher salt

a pinch or so of garlic salt (the kind I use is sold by McCormick and comes in a salt grinder)

and a splash or two of worcestershire sauce (I prefer the original, Lea & Perrin's)

This is all mixed together and shaped into a patty, and cooked on a hot grill for about 3 to 3.5 minutes per side, for a nice medium.

My bread preference right now is a fresh brioche bun. Brioche because the buns they sell at Trader Joe's are just the right size for a 1/3 pound burger, and also because when toasted, the butter in the bun just smells so good. But be careful! They burn easily!

So there you have it, my go-to basic burger for 2011.

And here's a pic (because I was told I needed to have a pic). That's the basic burger on a grill pic.

National Burger Month 05/03/2011: Hotdog

2011-05-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

This is a hotdog. Really. Or at least, this is what a hotdog would look like if it decided one day it wanted to dress up as a burger.

It started out as two store-bought Hebrew National all beef franks. As far as hotdogs go, the Hebrew Nationals are pretty good. I actually prefer Sabretts, but these were on hand. I don't really go for the Santa Cruz health food store organic hotdogs. It's the classic New York dirty water dog for me.

But how does it begin to look like a burger? With a little bit of violence.

And since these are generally leaner than ground chuck, I needed a binder to keep things together. So I whipped an egg, and got my hands dirty with the minced hotdog.

Greasy.

So this is what it looks like when done. I topped it as I would a regular hotdog: with mustard and sauerkraut.

The hotdog burger was actually Leslie's idea. When she first suggested it, I had a visceral yuck reaction. Executed, it tasted like a hotdog, but did not quite feel like a hotdog. I think the problem for me is that both hamburger and hotdog occupy an overly marked area of my food story. Both are comfort foods that resonate with much personal history and meaning. And while I can make a burger out of other kinds of meats (and those who have read this blog before have seen me do the weirdest crap), stripping a hotdog of what it means and infusing it into a burger was just too much freaky roleplaying.

I think I like the concept better than the product.

National Burger Month 05/02/2011: Cheeseburger with Extra Stuff

2011-05-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

This burger is hiding something.

I actually did something like this shortly before National Burger Month. I ate it in front of Bettina. She had something healthy... a salad, or something. And I had this. She asked me whether I was going to do Burger Month, but at the time I was still uncommitted. I guess I could say that this burger inspired me to go on.

But anyway...

It's not really the cheese. This is Vermont Cabot Cheddar. Just that would make this just a good burger.

This is the Cheeseburger Eggsplosion. It's not my invention. I actually got it from my favorite burger site, A Hamburger Today. They blogged about it about a month ago.

It starts with a hole.

And then we stick an egg in the hole.

And then we flip it over.

And then we get it all over ourselves.

This is the Cheeseburger Eggsplosion.

National Burger Month 05/01/2011: Teriyaki Beef Burger with Grilled Pineapples

2011-05-01T16:06:00.000-07:00

I'm still unsure if I should keep on doing this. As recently as a week ago, I was like, "burger month? I think it's a bi-annual thing." This could be just for today, but last night I was equivocating again.

After a recent vacation to the Philippines, I had grown a couple of pants sizes larger. I can't help it if I can get a buffet and a massage for $15-- I was like a human wagyu cow. In the ensuing months, and after a couple weeks of riding my bike everywhere, I have gotten back to wearing my pants without suffering from belt line bruises at the end of the day. But National Burger Month is here and it is a dangerous thing. And it's so tiring to think of a new burger a day.

So I equivocate.

To celebrate the beginning of the National Burger Month and les damnés de la terre on this May Day, I have a teriyaki beef burger that I top with grilled pineapple rings.

The teriyaki marinade for the burgers is simple, based off a recipe from Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes of the World. I marinated ground beef for about one hour, then formed it into patties, which I grilled, along with pineapple rings. This is a very simple burger.

For the teriyaki marinade:

1/4 cup sake

1/3 cup soy sauce

1/3 cup mirin

1 tbsp sugar

Developing: It's 2011 National Burger Month

2011-05-01T11:06:00.000-07:00

If I do this, there's no backing down. It's a commitment for 31 days. Oh boy...

Previous National Burger Month burgers.

list of things i ate this past weekend

2010-08-30T18:20:00.000-07:00

No photos (of food).

My weekend started on Thursday when L took me to the airport. And it is still going on right now, so I may add stuff to this list. I tried to make it go in chronological order. I may have misses some stuff from Sunday due to the sheer volume.

1. Grilled squid at Tribu Grill, San Bruno
2. Adobo rice
3. Pork sisig
4. Frozen brazo de mercedes
5. Chocolate chip cookies (homemade)
6. 2 eggs over easy, bacon and homefries at the Palace Diner, Flushing
7. Organic grapefruit purchased at Trader Joe's Santa Cruz, eaten in Kew Gardens
8. Roast pork bun at Fay Da Cafe and Bakery, Flushing
9. Taro bubble tea
10. Sweet crusted bun with kaya
11. The best frozen lemonade ever (the person who claims she made it said there was lemon zest) at the USTA Center in Flushing

That's Roger Federer in the foreground during his practice session in the Louis Armstrong Stadium at the USTA Center in Flushing, tuning up before the US Open

12. Green tea mochi from Fay Da, eaten in Kew Gardens
13. Chunks of fried pork, yellow rice and red beans at a Cuban restaurant whose name I can't remember, for the life of me, in Union City
14. Churros
15. Cafe con leche
16. "Greek breakfast" at Cafe Lala in the upper west side
17. Cafe au lait
18. Grilled chicken tacos I made in Edison
19. Some pico de gallo I made in Edison
20. Herr's Smoked Baby Back Ribs flavored ridged potato chips
21. Roasted Sweet Ajicito peppers I grilled up in Edison
22. Corn with butter and soy sauce I grilled up
23. Corned beef, sinangag and an egg, over easy in Edison
24. Pancit something or another
26. A bunch of beer
27. Pork bbq skewers
28. Edith's pork sisig
29. More pancit something or another
30. Dad's paella valenciana
31. Layni's chicken inasal
32. Some fried blue fish
33. Tita Oyette's empanadas
34. Edith's lumpia shanghai
35. More beer
36. Tita Patsy's mocha cake from a Filipino bakery
37. Farah's blueberry pie from Whole Foods
38. Edith's Ginataan halo halo
39. Dad's Ghirardelli chocolate brownies
40. Some plums
41. A little coffee
42. An orange cream cream ice from Rita's
43. A little coffee
44. A little pancit
45. Peeky toe crab salad at DBGB, LES
46. The tunisienne sausage, which is DB's take on the merguez
47. Iron Hill lager, which is an unpasteurized lager. It was nice and summery. But since it was unpasteurized, it still contained some live cultures of yeast. And I think it's celebrating a party in my stomach right now.
48. A little bit of Ria's tiramisu ice cream cake that she ordered at DBGB
49. A nine dollar lemon and tarragon chicken wrap on the old Virgin America.
50.... hmm. we'll see.

Summer means chocolate ice cream with chocolate chunks and mint chocolate swirl

2010-06-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

Damn. It's summertime already and it's time to break out the ice cream maker. In my two year relationship with my ice cream maker, I haven't ever made a non-fruit based ice cream. I've done strawberry and blueberry variations (strawberry cardamom is dynamite) and i've done peach and apricot ice creams (apricot ginger!). And I've done a pretty good mojito ice cream. That was pretty much like making a cocktail, but it was mostly fruit. And I can't believe I haven't ever done chocolate. I think mostly it was my fear of failing at the most basic of ice creams that kept me from making chocolate. Man, I love chocolate.

So this is a chocolate ice cream with chocolate chunks and a mint chocolate swirl. The recipe is a pretty basic ice cream recipe. I took a cue from Alton Brown's recipe-- my experience with his work has been pretty good. I think his secret is just that he keeps everything no nonsense. In his version, he uses a mix of half and half and heavy cream. I skipped the heavy cream on my take (not because I think it's too heavy, I do... but because I was absent-minded and forgot about it).

summer summer summer time!

I'm not going to reprint Brown's recipe here. Just follow his, which I think is an excellent chocolate ice cream recipe. I will say that I used really good quality cocoa. In this case, it was Scharffenberger unsweetened cocoa. I also used pretty good chocolate for my chunk mix-- a 71% Valrhona.

For the swirl part of this ice cream, I took two tablespoons of dark chocolate spread (kind of like Nutella without the hazelnut) and two teaspoons of mint extract and microwaved it for 15 seconds, mixing right after.

Right when your ice cream is almost all set (about 20 minutes into churning in the ice cream maker), toss in about 1/4 cup of rough chopped chocolate and drizzle in the mint chocolate swirl. Try to get the drizzling into the center of the mix. I miscalculated a little bit and started throwing the extra stuff into the ice cream maker before the ice cream was consistently frozen enough. Once you disturb the mix with foreign objects like chocolate bits, the temperature of the custard rises and the ice cream starts to melt. I had to quickly finish my additions or ruin the whole bunch. Unfortunately, I didn't get enough of my mint chocolate swirl in there. Perhaps next time I'll try mixing the chocolate-mint sauce first, and then toss in the solid ingredients. Next time, next time...

But the final result was delicious. I'm about to take it to a barbecue.

Gifts: The Bacon Press and the Sloppy Joe

2010-06-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

A little late with this blog. A little late with everything.

Last weekend was a good old time. It was graduation weekend and several of my friends came back to Santa Cruz to a) graduate, or b) celebrate with people who graduated. There were plenty of parties to go to. One of which featured the world premiere of Lindsey and my tribute to Lady Gaga at the karaoke at Coasters. That one was dedicated to our dear friend Becky, who walked the next day.

t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-telephone

I also ran into Jim and Jessica at Jessica's reading for A New Cadence Poetry Series, which Jim facilitates. Jessica didn't read poetry. She read one of her excellent stories because this was the first installment of A New Cadence Poetry Series's A New Cadence Poetry Series Summer of Fiction. Later on, during the weekend, I met up with them at their place because our dear friend Alexis was back in town for Chris's graduation. They also gave me this:

It's a bacon press. I never knew these existed. The bacon press is a hefty piece of cast iron, with a wooden handle. Apparently, they're supposed to be placed on top of bacon on a skillet so that the bacon doesn't shrivel up while it fries. Jessica said they found it at a thrift store and thought of me when they bought it. Thanks, Jim and Jessica! Once I clean the rust up, it will be put to good use, helping me enjoy my bacon. Jim also suggested that perhaps I should start a publishing company called Bacon Press, and this can be my imprint.

And one more gift. I had a slow start to my Saturday. Had a late breakfast at 11:30. It wasn't that extravagant, so by 5PM I was pretty darn hungry. Hopped in my car and drove to my new favorite burger place in Santa Cruz, burger. Since burger. has opened, they've gotten better and better. Last night I found out that their beer license was granted and their taps are on and they have a pretty good selection of beers on tap. I predict that this place will be my favorite place this summer. And they have a few more things in store that have yet to come online-- a jukebox, movie nights, games... How exciting. Can it be that for the first time in forever, a restaurant will actually survive on the corner of Mission and Bay?

So I was sitting at the bar, having my usual Dude Burger (bacon, cheese and avocado), with garlic fries and a mint chocolate chip milkshake, when the guy behind the bar approaches and sets a plate in front of me. "I want you to try this," he said. "It's a sloppy joe."

Do they know the way to my heart or what?

Already I was kind of full from the burger and garlic fries extravaganza in front of me, but the sloppy joe was a new menu item and I had to give it a taste. I haven't had a sloppy joe since my time at P.S. 152 in Woodside, Queens. I remember that it was kind of a comfort food. Burger.'s sloppy joe was zesty. I think I tasted a little roasted red bell pepper in there, so it wasn't just a mess of meat in tomato sauce. If I hadn't already eaten 1/3 pounds of grass fed beef from Humboldt County, I would've scarfed the sloppy joe down and licked the plate. Oh man, that was good.

I then proceeded to walk around for the next four hours in food coma bliss.

Like whoah. What a great week for gifts.

National Doughnut Day 2010

2010-06-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, 4 June was National Doughnut Day. Apparently, it's been practiced since the 1930s. It was started by the Salvation Army to honor a bunch of people who sent some donuts to American soldiers in World War I. And according to this article, some Canadians are envious of this American holiday.

To be honest, I was unaware of it (!!) when I woke up in the morning. But I did go to the Ferrel's Donuts for a little pre-work snack. They make a pretty good chocolate old fashioned and a pretty good glazed buttermilk.

That evening, spurred on by newly acquired knowledge of National Doughnut Day, I got a bunch of people together for some deep fried dough. This is the third year I celebrated NDD. In 2008, I made two kinds of beignets: one from scratch, and another from a Cafe du Monde mix. In 2009, Bettina made doughnuts using her grandmother's recipe, and I made some potato donuts from the Joy of Cooking. This year, I decided to go back to the beignets.

Beignets with hearts

After having two Ferrel's donuts in the morning and a bunch of beignets in the evening, I needed to go for a long bike ride on Saturday.

This was the first half of my bike ride. And then my phone ran out of batteries, so the GPS couldn't track the rest of the ride. We went up about 50-100 more feet in altitude, and about 2 hours longer in time.

Here's an approximate map of our route (taken from an earlier ride).

View Wilder Loop in a larger map

Of course, all of that work went down the drain after doing a little drinky drinky pre-Pride celebration later that evening at the 529 Madhouse. Oh well.

National Burger Month 05/31/2010: Sourdough Grilled Cheese Sandwich Burger with Bacon and Tomato

2010-06-01T17:14:00.000-07:00

Yes. It is the final day of National Burger Month. Once again, I cannot wait to not have to come up with a burger-like thingie every night, after having eaten burgers or burger-like thingies for much of the month. Oh, but we had some good times. I liked breaking out the classics again, like the Juicy Lucy. And I liked playing dress-up with food that would otherwise not be in burger form, pretending to be burgers for an evening.... Steamed halibut burger, I shall miss you dearly. Spam Musubi burger, au revoir. As Julio Iglesias once sang, "To all the grills I've loved before... they travel in and out my door..."

I wanted to finish out the month with something kind of traditional, but with a twist. My favorite burger blog, A Hamburger Today, first published their Hamburger Fatty Melt a couple of years ago. Their version was just two grilled cheese sandwiches sandwiching a burger patty. They stuck it pretty traditional: white bread, Kraft singles and a burger. They have since updated their creation with the introduction of the Bacon Burger Fatty Melt. That's a nice burger. The Bacon Fatty Melt is a tribute to excess. I think they went with multiple layers there. They stack as follows:

Bacon-stuffed grilled cheese sandwich as bun top
Cheese
Bacon
Four-ounce beef patty
Bacon-stuffed grilled cheese sandwich as interstitial bun (a nod to the Big Mac)
Bacon
Cheeese
Four-ounce beef patty
Bacon-stuffed grilled cheese sandwich as bun bottom

Nice. But not really my style. I went with a little more subtlety on my version.

My stack goes:

Sourdough grilled cheese sandwich with cheddar cheese, mayo and tomato
Four-ounce beef patty with 1/2 tsp minced shallot, salt, pepper, and a few drops of Tabasco
Sourdough grilled cheese sandwich with cheddar cheese

It's not that I have something against Kraft singles. I find them useful for specific applications. And I'm not a food snob since I am not averse to white bread. But I think sourdough went so well with good extra sharp New York Cheddar. And they do make a good sourdough here in the SF Bay Area. The burger itself, with the shallot (inspired by the steak tartare burger), was so fragrant, so moist. I also cut rounds out of grilled cheese sandwiches so the bread to burger ration wasn't wack.

So there it was. Oh yes, I used mayo inside the grilled cheese. Some people are dogmatic about grilled cheese sandwiches. But this burger isn't about burger dogma. None of this month was, so I think changing up the grilled cheese part of the puzzle was apt. I think that tossing a slice of tomato and spreading some mayo on at least one of the pieces of bread makes the grilled cheese sandwich so much creamier and fuller.

This was definitely one of the highlights of the month. I think it could've been the best burger I made all month. It was simple. It wasn't too fancy. And it was comfort food on top of comfort food (literally). The resulting sandwich was so juicy, so tasty. I sat there, post-burger, thinking that I couldn't have ended burger month better.

K. I'm done with this month. I'm Audi 5000.

National Burger Month 05/30/2010: Sirloin Tartare Burger

2010-06-01T16:43:00.000-07:00

Sirloin tartare burger. Anchovy is key.

Back in the kitchen again. I can't keep on eating out for my burgers, and I really need to close out National Burger Month with some that I cook at home.

A few days ago, I remarked that I love it when Mark Bittman does his thing with burgers. I am a Bittman fan, and I am trying to cook every single thing in his awesome, awesome work, How to Cook Everything, which I feel is the contemporary equivalent to Irma Rombauer, Marion Becker and Ethan Becker's Joy of Cooking. It is the cookbook to own if you need to own a single cookbook.

In a recent New York Times piece, Bittman writes his version of the steak tartare, in burger form. My burger tonight is a faithful recreation of Bittman's recipe.

I used grassfed sirloin for my burger. I think the best part of this was the anchovy. The anchovy gave the steak tartare burger so much more dimension. The capers were a nice touch, and the medium boiled egg to garnish was also okay. But the anchovy pushed this burger from good to superb. I cooked my burger to medium, but I kind of wish I cooked it medium rare so I could appreciate the quality beef even more.

Also, from now on minced shallot shall replace my traditional grated onion whenever I have this option. The shallot made the burger so much more fragrant.

Oh yes.

National Burger Month 05/29/2010: Hubert Keller's Burger Bar... or let's ghetto-ize the coloreds and people with babies in the back corner of the room, where they can sit next to the kitchen entrance, in dim lighting, so they cannot take nice pictures of their burgers for their food blogs.

2010-06-01T14:52:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Leslie who offered to take me to a burger place in return for my transporting her to the airport. What a way to kick of the final three days of National Burger Month. Contrary to the seemingly negative air of my blog post title, Keller's Burger Bar, on the sixth floor of Macy's Union Square, was actually a pleasant place to be. They had a wonderful view of Union Square, assuming you are not ghetto-ized into a corner. And while I did feel like I was shoved into the back corner of the restaurant with what seemed (and perhaps it was just coincidence) like the other people of color, or people with babies who could potentially be rowdy, we did have our own personal TV monitors, so we could watch the unfortunate beginning of the Los Angeles Lakers Western Conference Final game, in which they eliminated the Suns. Might as well have watched the Chicago-Philly NHL Finals game. I should've listened to Leslie, who suggested I order a kobe beef burger so I could take my aggressions out on Kobe Bryant via the kobe beef.

The burgers were actually delicious. I had the American Classic Cheeseburger, while Leslie ordered the Peppercorn burger. I think hers was better because it was slightly more flavorful. To be fair, the American Classic Cheeseburger was a good burger. It was perfectly cooked medium. The meat was juicy and delicious. The greens were fresh, and the cheddar was cheddar. But it would've been just okay if it weren't for the truffle sauce I ordered extra as a side, with which I doused the sandwich. The truffle sauce was perfectly salty, perfectly earthy and gave my otherwise just okay burger a strong anchor and kicked the burger up to good.

American Classic Cheeseburger, cracked wide open

In hindsight, perhaps I would've better been served by ordering Hubert's Favorite buffalo burger.

Leslie's Peppercorn burger was delicious. It was nicely crusted with red, black and white peppercorns, and like the Classic American was cooked to a pretty medium. On the side was a little cup of Keller's mustard spiced sauce. I think compared to the Classic American burger, which tastes quite like a classic American burger, this Peppercorn burger was a little more exciting. Without getting too gimmicky, the burger offered something more than the basic burger. The mustard sauce was piquant but not overwhelming. This was a very good burger.

Peppercorn Burger at Keller's Burger Bar

We skipped the cute little dessert burgers because I was beginning to feel like that Monty Python skit with the big eater.

National Burger Month 05/28/2010: burger. crawfish.

2010-06-01T13:23:00.000-07:00

I knew that this evening I was going to meet with Aileen and Suebee again. This time, we wanted to go to Boiling Crab. Apparently, Ria played Boiling Crab up so much for Suebee that we definitely had to go while she was in town. So good to catch up.

So knowing that I was going to do some crawfish extravaganza de amor that evening, I went ahead and checked out how burger. was for lunch. If you remember, I went to this place before and really, truly liked their burgers. It's the real deal and I have since updated my Yelp review and said they have the best burgers in Santa Cruz. On this day I had their special of the day, the Don Ho. The Don Ho was three sliders/mini-burgers over fries (your choice of sweet potato or regular potato), with pineapple and a "Hawaiian" aioli. The sauce and the pineapple made the burger pop with flavor. But the problem with cooking sliders is that cooks don't always adjust the fry time to accommodate the lower meat content. I know-- it's a challenge. I've tried. I've been to plenty of places that say they have sliders. And it' okay, it's forgiveable that most sliders I eat are dry. The only places I know that have successfully made sliders to my liking (which means, small and juicy) are the Red in Santa Cruz, and White Castle's. The Red cooks em to perfection, medium. White Castle's is sort of steamed on the griddle. So unless burger. fixes their slider timing, stick to their regular burgers, which are excellent.

The other highlight of my lunch at burger. was the company I involuntarily had. I sat down on the shared long bench next to these two UCSC undergrads. I love UCSC undergrads. They remind me of a time when I once looked upon the world with a twinkle of optimism in my eyes. Their unbridled idealism makes me feel warm and fuzzy, as I do when I look at a cute welsh corgi puppy. But this day, I sat next to someone who was recounting to her friend all the drama in one of the ethnic student associations on campus. I mean I didn't want to listen, but she wasn't all hush hush about all the gossip, so I was an involuntary listener. And I listen well. My friends like to talk to me because I listen well, so I did my best this time around. Apparently, there are four people involved here. The storyteller, Minami, Hikari and James. James is in Tokyo now. I think Minami is going out with James. Storyteller was skyping with James. Hikari comes in and says "James, I'm sorry I was hating on you. I think you're okay guy." Hikari leaves, and James tells Minami "I knew Hikari hated me!" So storyteller was all up in arms about how Minami might be all plastic because how can she be hating on somebody and coming to her for advice about her own relationship with the guy she hates when she knows that the storyteller is in between everybody? Anyway, it's good that she's the kind of person she is, to be able to navigate the rocky communications between Minami, Hikari and James.

That evening, we had four pounds of crawfish and two dungeness crabs between four people at Boiling Crab in San Jose. The wait was three hours, but it was well worth it. Thank goodness for the Target across the parking lot, for us to waste time in. My fingers smelled like crawfish well into the next day. I guess we could've gone to Crawdaddy a few miles away (and only 30 minutes wait), but the Whole Shabang at Boiling Crab is it. Plus, the servers had cool piercings.

This is the "before" shot. I would post an "after" shot but the after just looks like a pile of empty crawfish shells.

National Burger Month 05/27/2010: Burgertime

2010-06-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

I have quite a few days to catch up on here... I've been slacking on my blogging, but definitely not on my burgers. The last week of May brought a few more drops of rain (perhaps Spring's last hurrah?) and a flurry of social activity. Alas, on a couple of days, nary a burger was consumed by me.

Thursday the 27th was one of them, making it two days in a row that no burgers were eaten by me. Wednesday night, we stopped at a sukiyaki/shabu shabu place in Japantown in SF called Shabusen. I'm typically wary of shabu shabu places because even though I love a good hot pot, there are too many bad hot pot places. We were split on whether to go to Mums Home of Shabu Shabu or this place. In the end, we chose Shabusen because despite Mums looking trendier and cooler, at least externally, Shabusen had sukiyaki, which I really do love. Shabusen's sukiyaki wasn't bad. I was confused by the rules they had: 90 minutes to eat an all-you-can eat dinner; if one person around the table ordered the all-you-can eat, then everybody has to order all-you-can-eat; you must address the person next to you as brougham; no sharing and no wasting food (I made one of these rules up... guess). But we finally figured out that we didn't have to order the all-you-can-eat because the regular dinner was all we could eat anyway. The scallops were fresh and delicious, and the meat was good. It was a bit pricy though.

No real burger content on the 27th. But there was this:

It's burgertime!

Thanks to the Santosi for my burgertimer. All the rest of the burgers for burgermonth were timed with the burgertimer.

National Burger Month 05/26/2010: Housework

2010-05-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

I probably won't be able to eat burgers or burger-like food today so I will take this time to point out some wonderful burger links.

But first, here are some cupcakes I made some time ago:

Burger cuppies!

I took a vanilla cupcake recipe, and then I took a chocolate cupcake recipe and then I stuck them together with some buttercream icing that I saturated with primary colors. More of my cupcakes can be found here.

Today's New York Times has Mark Bittman's newest take on burgers. He's done this in the past and I loved all his burger recipes. Even did a couple the last time I did this Burger Month thing.

This year, he goes beyond the basic burger with recipes for a pork fennel burger, a beef tartare burger, a curry lamb burger, and a pork shumai burger.

I think the pork shumai burger looks familiar. Not saying I came up with it first or I'm the original or anything... just saying, you know, we come up with good stuff in our kitchen too (though the prawns in his recipe are a masterstroke). I think I shall be trying the curry lamb and the beef tartare sometime. Perhaps before the end of this month?

National Burger Month 05/25/2010: Cheeseburger Soup!

2010-05-25T21:43:00.000-07:00

Oh man. I suppose there's enough in here to make it a deconstructed cheeseburger. Yes, there's cheese. And yes, there's ground beef. And I guess if you tilt your head a certain way, the bechamel sauce could be considered the bun component. But the similarities end there.

in yer tummy, everything is soup anyway

I heard about cheeseburger soup a long time ago. I don't remember where. On the way home from jury duty today (I wasn't selected as a juror for reasons I shall not get into here) I got drenched in a rain storm and I really craved a nice hot soup for dinner. Cheeseburger Soup was a way for me to continue with my theme without really compromising on the soup part of my craving. This recipe is not based on any recipe in particular, but all the common ingredients found in the various online recipe sources are in here. There's a burger component, there's a bun component, and there's even a french fries component. But I haven't been literal with my burger treatments all month anyway, so this is probably okay.

1/2 lbs. ground beef
1 potato diced
1/2 onion chopped
2 stalks celery chopped
1 carrot grated
1 tsp dried basil
1 tbsp parsley chopped
2 cups chicken soup
1 cup cheddar diced (use Velveeta if you don't want it as oily as I had mine... cheddar gets oily when it melts)
2 tbsp cream cheese
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
1 cup milk
Salt-n-Pepa say push it really good

Melt 1 tbsp butter in large pot. Toss in the beef, the celery, the carrot and the onion. Sauté and brown the beef. Once it's brown, toss in the parsley and the basil and stir fry a little bit more. Then toss in the chicken broth and the potatoes. Put a lid on it foo'.

Boil.

While waiting to boil, make a béchamel sauce by melting the remaining butter in a sauce pan over low to medium heat. Mix in the flour. Finally, gradually stir in the milk until the mixture is smooth like béchamel.

Once the soup has boiled, gradually fold in the béchamel. Simmer. Then toss in the cheese cubes and stir until melted. Turn down the heat and stir in the sour cream. That is it. Oh and salt and pepper to taste.

It tastes like... cheese soup with veggies. Don't ask me where the cheeseburger part is. The deconstruction is po-mo and all, and I appreciate that because I like post-modern foodstuffs, but it takes a stretch of imagination that most people don't have. It is kind of yummy on a cold, wet day though.

National Burger Month 05/24/2010: Bacon Veggieburger

2010-05-24T23:57:00.000-07:00

Bacon Veggieburger

I needed to eat something veggie so I made tonight's burger a veggie burger. I found this recipe for potato veggie burgers that are really similar to latkes. Any chance I get to use the shredder/grater attachment of my food processor I take, so I hopped on this recipe. The only difference I made was I decreased the potato and increased the spice.

And I added bacon... which turns gourmet into gourm-yay.

Into a grater:
2 potatoes
1 carrot

Add:
1 cup corn
1 cup black beans (mashed)
4 scallions, chopped

Mix the stuff.

Spice:
salt, to taste
pepper, ground, to taste
1 tbsp garlic powder

Mix. Form patties. Fry for about 5 minutes per side over oil on medium-hot pan.

Top with bacon, a couple of strips
And cheese, cheddar

National Burger Month 05/23/2010: Spam Musubi

2010-05-23T23:59:00.000-07:00

Deluxe

This one fits into the other kinds of food pretending to be a burger series.

SPAM is so misunderstood by Americans. It is a thing of wonder, and not a thing to laugh at. Oh if only they knew that half the world survives on SPAM.

I've made SPAM musubi in the past. SPAM musubi is basically SPAM pretending to be sushi. So this particular dish I cooked up is SPAM pretending to be sushi pretending to be a burger. How po-mo.

I briefly talked about SPAM Rice Burgers when I made halibut burgers. There's a restaurant in Japan called Freshness Burger that makes a SPAM Rice Burger using a slab of SPAM and a "bun" made of rice. At first I thought this was genius until I figured out that their idea of a SPAM burger is really just a slice of SPAM sandwiched in a bun with few veggies tossed in. So when I first decided to do SPAM burger, I knew that I needed to mince the stuff to get the texture I wanted. This particular burger-like sandwich is based on the SPAM musubi.

Stuff:
1/2 can of SPAM, chopped up.
some steamed rice, shaped into buns and made into onigiri-yaki (recipe here)
2 sheets of nori cut into 2 inch strips
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup panko breadcrumbs
1 tbsp furikake

Mix together the soy sauce and the sugar. Set aside.

Mix together the chopped SPAM (I prefer SPAM Lite), eggs and breadcrumbs. Form these into buns and fry them over medium heat at about 3-4 minutes a side. Take your onigiri-yaki and sprinkle some furikake on it. Wrap each onigiri-yaki bun in the cut nori. Use the sugar-soy sauce mixture to "glue" the seaweed ends together. Lay your SPAM burgers onto the buns. That's pretty much it. It might be nice to brush some of the soy-sugar sauce on the SPAMburgers before putting the top bun on.

I like it. It was great paired with a cocktail made from Mount Gay Rum, pineapple juice and muddled mint.

National Burger Month 05/22/2010: In-N-Out

2010-05-23T23:45:00.000-07:00

I really don't have much to say. It's In-N-Out.

On the way to SF. Detoured to my favorite burger stop in Daly City. In a rush.

National Burger Month 05/21/2010: I want some fried chicken

2010-05-22T09:34:00.001-07:00

There are numerous recipes that purport to be KFC's original recipe fried chicken. The initial idea tonight was to remake the KFC original recipe into a chicken burger. But I looked at some of them and they were so totally complex and would've taken me forever to get the secret spices together.

So I searched instead for just "southern fried chicken" and found Paula Deen's recipe. I typically never watched Deen but I appreciated that all she ever had shows about was bacon and butter and bacon and butter. I figured I could trust her expertise in that matter so I adapted her recipe for my use. I wanted to make coleslaw too, but when it took until 9PM to gather all my ingredients, I figured I had to drop that part of the plan so that we could eat before 11. I did make mashed potatoes as a side.

Paula Deen's spice mix:
1/4 cup black pepper, ground
1/4 cup powdered garlic
1/2 cup salt

Southern Fried Chicken Burger Stuff:
1 lb organic chicken breast, chopped, almost minced
2 eggs, beaten
Enough Tabasco sauce to turn the beaten egg orange
1/2 cup self rising flour
Black pepper, ground
Canola oil

Combine the beaten egg and the Tabasco and let the chicken sit in this hot tub of spice for about 10 minutes. Mix the flour and the pepper. Form patties out of the chicken, squeezing out excess liquid. Spice the chicken with the spice mix-- both sides, and all around. Drag the chicken carefully through the self rising flour.

Lay the chicken patties on a hot skillet, where about 3 or so tablespoons of canola oil has been glistening. I'd say medium to medium high heat. About 4 minutes per side. We used francese rolls for buns.

It was actually pretty good. Tasted like fried chicken. I was pretty satisfied and we were able to eat before 11.

And now Cibo Matto:

National Burger Month 05/20/2010: Cornmeal encrusted catfish

2010-05-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

Like a serpent in wait, the cornmeal encrusted catfish laps at the air with its slithery tongue, ready to strike when the time is right.

I usually make cornmeal encrusted catfish when I am exhausted for ideas about what to cook. It's a fast dinner, it's easy, and catfish is pretty easy to get. This time around I didn't have any buttermilk to give the fish subtle tang. But that wouldn't have worked anyway since the fish chunks wouldn't have held together if I used it instead of eggs. I could've added a bit more salt or citrus, though. Next time, next time...

Stuff:
1 pound catfish filet, minced
1 egg beaten
1 cup cornmeal
1 tbsp sriracha hot sauce
salt and pepper

Just mix everything together. Let it sit for a little bit so the fish can absorb the sriracha flavor.

National Burger Month 05/19/2010: Nothing to Report

2010-05-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

But I had a burger. I had a Jack's cheeseburger. It was a Jack's cheeseburger. I know that I shouldn't really repeat burgers during burger month. I did it yesterday with the Juicy Lucy, and I did it again today with the Jack's. But it hit the spot.

Oh well. This is a bad week for burgers.

National Burger Month 05/18/2010: Tour of California Stage 3

2010-05-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

Today, the 2010 Tour of California stopped by Santa Cruz for the finish of Stage 3. I took the afternoon off to hang out at the festival area by the finish line with Bettina, Lindsey, Kate and Isabel. John joined us later because he was prevented from crossing the street on account of bikers. It was pretty laid back. Lots of weirdos have come from far and wide to watch the cyclists. We stood at about 200m to the finish line, at the foot of a hill, expecting a lot of speed from riders about to launch into their sprint finishes. The race setup made for pretty dramatic views of the action. Like these:

zoom

zoooom

dznuts

zooooooooom

So cool to watch Dave Zabriskie win it. We went back home later to watch the whole stage on my DVR and found that the stupid VS Network cut the broadcast with about 4km left in the race to jump to a stupid fluff piece pre-game show for the NHL conference finals!!! How stupid! Even Lance "McOneball" Armstrong agreed. Here's his tweet:

Who's the dumbass @versustv that cut off @AmgenTourofCali coverage w/ a mile to go for pregame hockey?? #pathetic

And we also found out that the VS network camera cut away from where we were standing on the street corner just as we would've been shown. Bettina thought that it caught some part of our legs.

Anyway, we went home and I made a little grupetto (cycling terms are apt) of Juicy Lucies at Kate's request.

Oh and I should post this picture of Jonathan Vaughters, DS at Team Garmin-Transitions, signing this weirdo's manboob. I hope the guy with the manboobs was able to at least say hi to Dave Zabriskie because he sure was dedicated to getting all the autographs from team Garmin.

National Burger Month 05/17/2010: steamedporkbunburger

2010-05-18T02:53:00.000-07:00

Clockwise from right: steamedporkbunburger, sr., his lover bokchoy with oyster sauce, and their lovechild steamedporkbunburger, jr.)

I don't know if I can call this a burger either. It's certainly more burger-like than last night's sushi. But this is, like some of my other burgers, a not hamburger pretending to be a hamburger.

This was two days in the making. The initial plan was to turn a Chinese steamed pork bun into a burger. So I started looking for recipes all over the place for steamed pork buns. I found a bunch but was reminded during my search of the wonderful pork buns that David Chang serves at his Momofuku Noodle Bar. I knew that I couldn't do the actual pork belly, and I know I will have to save that for another day-- oh, to have Chang's tender buns in my mouth again. (hahaha)

So I thought I would at least copy that whole folded bun and some cucumber fixins thing and I found this recipe. I at least had the steamed bun part down, or so I thought. My dough was an utter failure at first. It just didn't rise. As the dinner hour approached, I became more despondent. Bettina and Leslie both told me not to be so stressed out about this. In the end, I went and had sushi. When i came back, I found that my dough had finally risen. After a test case using the flat folded bun method, I realized it was best if I just steamed whole chunks of bun without flattening them per the recipe because my test cases were utter failures. Just slice off chunks of dough, about 2 inches high and about 3 inches in diameter and steam these suckers for about five minutes. Reassured that my project hadn't failed yet, I waited another day. And in case my personal attempt fell apart, Leslie went ahead and made her own versions of the buns just to see if those would work differently than mine.

The burger was adapted from this recipe for something called Chinese lion's head pork. It's pretty much the Chinese minced pork recipe version of Vince Carter (can play the small forward and shooting guard positions), or the Chinese minced pork recipe version of Miley Cyrus (triple threat: can sing, can act, and can do lap dances on her gay director's knee). I mean to say that this lion's head pork thing is a recipe that might work well with any number of dishes-- in soups, dumplings, steamed pork buns, or in this case, steamed pork buns disguised as burgers.

The burger:
1/2 pound ground pork
1 scallion chopped
1/2 tsp ginger, finely minced
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
1 1/4 tsp rice wine (I actually used sake)
1/4 tsp sesame oil
3/8 tsp salt
1/2 of a beaten egg
2 tbsp corn starch
pepper to taste
1 tbsp oil to fry in

Just mix everything together. The cornstarch dries it up a little and pulls things together. It probably will get stickymushy but thats fine. As long as you form a couple of patties, that's great. Heat the oil up in a pan and get it to around medium. Fry the patties in the pan about 3--4 minutes each side, or until it gets a little golden.

Slice the steamed buns and make burgers.

They kind of tasted like good, fresh steamed pork buns.

National Burger Month 05/16/2010: Sushi

2010-05-17T22:49:00.000-07:00

I didn't have a burger tonight. I was pretty excited about my burger. I scheduled my evening around my burger. I tried to make my own buns for my project burger. So I mixed stuff up. I kneaded my buns. I let my buns breathe.

But my buns didn't respond.

Limp buns

Despondent, we went to the sushi place and the kind sushi guy gave us free food and free saki. And then I was happy.

And then I went home and found that my buns were perfectly round and plump.

So the burgers will wait for tomorrow.

National Burger Month 05/15/2010: Juicy Lucy returns

2010-05-15T22:45:00.000-07:00

Excyooooooze me.

Yo what's up fatties.

I did a Juicy Lucy before. I did it to mark the midpoint of National Burger Month when I did it two years ago. And I'm doing it again today.

Juicy Lucy oozes with charm. Juicy Lucy is pretty obscene. Juicy Lucy is pretty good, the way it wears worcester and garlic salt. And you have to do it with American cheese or it won't work at all.

National Burger Month 05/14/2010: Jack's and burger.

2010-05-15T00:36:00.000-07:00

Oh man. I had two burgers today. This is fucking crazy and goddamit I'm really getting fat. I mean I guess I could justify this extravaganza of beef because I missed May 1st and May 2nd and I'm still catching up. So now I just need to double up for one more day and then I'll be all caught up.

And also after last night's burger trepidation, this is me re-upping on my commitment.

So my first burger was at Jack's. I went there for lunch. Jack's has been an old stand by for me, especially since it's a block away from my office. The people who work there are really nice and I don't know whether I should feel embarrassed about this, but they know me by name now and they know what I order all the time, so nowadays whenever I go in there they don't even have to talk to me. As far as burgers go, Jack's are standard fast food fare, but a little better.

But the highlight of my burger day was at a new place called burger. Found out about it last night at Hula's when the bartender told Lindsey that he opened up a new burger place on Mission and Bay. I'll just reproduce my Yelp review here because I'm trying to watch a John Waters movie with Bettina and Leslie right now and the movie's a little distracting.

I've been looking for a good burger in Santa Cruz for a long time. I mean there are a couple of real burger joints in town, but so far none of them have blown my socks off. I know where to go for a good veggie burger, and I know where to go when I want a mai tai with my burger, and I know where to go if I want a fast food burger in the middle of the day.

But finally, there's a place where there's an honest to goodness good burger that's tasty, moist and not too greasy. burger. (with the period) is it. I had what they call a "dude burger" which comes with avocado, bacon, lettuce and tomato. The bacon was perfectly crispy and not soggy. The veggies didn't have that stuck-in-the-fridge-all-day feeling. The bun had integrity and wasn't limp. And most importantly, the burger was cooked medium and did not seem to have been a frozen hockey puck of beef before it was delivered to me.

Oh, and they make really good shakes. I didn't order the horchata shake, but Leslie did and it was super.

I'm definitely coming back to Burger. soon.

the Dude Burger at Burger.

National Burger Month 05/13/2010: Ahi Tuna Burger at Hula's

2010-05-14T10:23:00.000-07:00

I decided to skip the kitchen tonight and meet up with Lindsey, Kate, Ashley and Caroline at Hula's. This really isn't a proper burger review because I committed the ultimate food blogger sin: I didn't bring a camera. But watching people take pictures of their food kind of annoys me whenever I go out to eat so I guess I'm ok with not having pictures (though I have been known to take the camera out every now and then; I just kind of sheepishly whip it out and take a quick snap).

I was actually going to skip a burger last night because I was in the mood for poke or something. I like their pupus at Hula's. But Kate guilt tripped me into ordering one. She said something about making commitments and that sometimes commitments are hard, but once you make them you need to stick to them. And I said, commitment also takes lots of compromise, and I guess by eating a burger I would have to accept that I would compromise my desire to have poke. It's part of the deal. I made a commitment to the burger.

But now that I think of it, compromise only works if it comes from both sides. I compromised my desire to skip a day by ordering an ahi tuna burger at Hula's last night. But the burger ain't compromising anything. What kind of relationship is this? I am being abused by a burger.

I've had the seared ahi burger at Hula's before. While I think some of the food there is pretty good, I don't remember being a huge fan of the ahi burger. It didn't knock my socks out. It was tasty, yes. There was a nice strong taste of ginger in it. The special sauce was zesty. But in the end, I wasn't entirely wowed. The bun was limp and the burger was a little too dry for tuna. So weh weh. So goes my compromise.

On the bright side, The sweet potato fries on the side, and the mai tais were delicious.

National Burger Month 05/12/2010: Thai Inspired

2010-05-12T22:14:00.000-07:00

I originally planned to bring back an old favorite, the Jucy Lucy. I even went out of my way to pick up some Kraft Singles, the king of American Cheeses (notice the capitalization-- I didn't mean the king of American cheeses, which I might actually locate somewhere around Vermont-way). But on my way out to pick up some Kraft Singles, the resident German asked me to also pick up some tom yum soup at Sabieng.

So I decided at the spur of the moment to switch gears and pick up some appetizers from the same restaurant. I really like the sweet potato fritters they have there. And to match the sweet potatoes, I decided to try to do a Thai inspired burger.

I don't know a single thing about cooking Thai, except that they sometimes use fish sauce and they often use lemongrass. So I scrounged up whatever Thai-ish ingredients I could find at the grocery and cobbled together something that maybe might look Thai if you squinted.

Stuff:
1/4 pound of ground chuck
1 stalk of lemongrass, sliced lengthwise
1 tbsp ginger, sliced lengthwise into 1 inch strips
2 cloves garlic minced
1 jalapeño pepper sliced
1 scallion chopped
1/2 cup fish sauce
1/4 cup water
1 tsp sugar
fresh ground peppers
1 tbsp oil

In a bowl mix together the water, the fish sauce, half the lemongrass, half the ginger, half the garlic, half the scallions and all the sugar. Form your beef into a patty and marinate it in the mixture for up to 30 minutes.

Heat the oil up in a small pan over medium-high heat. Toss the remainder of the lemongrass and ginger into the oil and get it nice and fragrant, about 1 minute. Toss the rest of the green stuff on-- the peppers, the scallions, and the garlic. Once the whole mess starts to smell up your kitchen, you can put your burger on and fry for about 3 minutes each side.

When it's done, lay your burgers on a warm bun (I still had some more Filipino pan de sal buns) and top it with some of the caramelized ginger, and the fried jalapeños. Also, if you have any, lay on some sweet and sour sauce to give the sandwich that sweetsalty thing.

It was nice... I kind of wished it tasted spicier. I think maybe next time, I'd mix some of the garlic and ginger into the patty itself.

sweetsalty but needs more spicy

National Burger Month 05/11/2010: Pork Adobo

2010-05-11T22:22:00.000-07:00

Q: What would Filipino pork adobo look like if it pretended to be a burger?
A: Brown. Pretty damn brown. Come to think of it, all of burger month has been pretty brown. But this was pretty darn brown. Like the skin of oppressed peoples. Pork adobo burger is as brown as they come.

I think in this case the concept was cooler than the execution. I mean it tasted like pork adobo, but the texture of the ground pork just didn't match my expectations. Maybe if I were not Filipino and I have never known what a real adobo tastes like or felt like, I wouldn't object. But even the household German said the texture of the meat was strange. I would prefer that my adobo came in pork and chicken chunks and not ground anything.

So here's how you do an adobong burger.

1/2 pound ground pork
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup Filipino soy sauce
3/4 cup water
3 cloves of garlic minced
1 bay leaf
1 tsp peppercorns
juice of half a lemon
some ground black pepper

In a skillet, combine the vinegar, the soy sauce, the water, the garlic, the bay leaf, the peppercorns and the lemon juice. Form patties from the pork and spice up with the ground black pepper. Stash the pork patties in the liquid mix for about 20 minutes. After a while, take the patties out and reserve them. Start the stove up and bring the soy-vinegar mixture to a simmer. Once it's simmering, I guess you can plop the pork back in and braise it for about 4 minutes per side. Normally, in an adobo, you would braise the pork or chicken chunks in the simmering liquid for about 20 minutes, or until the liquid reduces, adding water before it totally sizzles away. But since these are patties, you don't have to braise them for 20 minutes. Cooking time was much shorter.

I served these on warm Filipino pan de sal buns and topped with a salad of mango, tomato and onion.

It tastes right. It just didn't feel right. It was certainly brown enough.

Brown.

National Burger Month 05/10/2010: Wanna-kalbi burger.

2010-05-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

Almost two years to the day! So last time I did this stupid burger month thing, on May 11, I did a bulgogi-inspired burger. I did not plan to almost mark that anniversary with another Korean-inspired burger today, but I guess I just knew it was around time I brought out the kimchi. Tonight I made kalbi-inspired burgers.

I get a whole lot of food-related stuff in my email and about two weeks ago, I got my Chowhound newsletter and it pointed to this. So I took that recipe and used it for my burger marinade for tonight. Marinated for about an hour then I fried these suckers up.

I have nothing else to say except it was pretty damn good.

Pow.

National Burger Month 05/09/2010: Bistek Tagalog

2010-05-10T17:14:00.000-07:00

I hadn't really made a Filipino inspired burger yet. There were a couple of candidates like adobo pork, kare-kare, and even the crispy pata that I toyed with two years ago. In the end, bistek tagalog won out because of its simplicity and my desire to go back to the beef, after days of going all pork and veggie. I also wanted a good reason to use Filipino pan de sal for buns and this was a good reason.

Bistekburger is dedicate to Fabio who says that burgers are not burgers unless they are chuck ground, round ground, and charcoal grilled or fried.

It's really easy.
1/2 lb. chuck, ground
Juice of a lemon
1/4 cup hard soy sauce (preferably the Filipino kind)
Pepper, ground
1/2 onion, grated
1/2 onion, sliced into rings
Some canola oil

Pan de sal

Mix the grated onion in with the beef. Also season the beef with a little pepper.
Mix the lemon juice and soy sauce together for a marinade. Marinate the beef in this stuff. I would say about an hour, preferably more so that you can get the burger all soy saucy.

When it's coming on close to burger-time, fry the onion rings in a heavy skillet over some canola oil. While the onion fries, you can start forming patties with the beef. It will be wet and sloppy on account of the soy sauce. But this is fine. Just squeeze the soy sauce out so that the burger can have some integrity when you throw it on the pan. Who likes a burger without any integrity? I only trust upright, self-respecting burgers. Remove the onion slices and set them aside. Then toss the burger into the pan and fry, about 3-4 minutes each side (this takes a little longer than a non-marinated burger because the meat's all wet). When it's close to done, toss the remaining marinade in the pan and let it gurgle and splash for a little bit.

Serve over warm pan de sal and don't forget to top it with the reserved fried onion rings. Leslie made some Filipino-inspired salad, with mango, cucumber, onion and tomato. And it worked out pretty well with the burger.

National Burger Month 05/08/2010: Breakfast - pork sausage and french toast

2010-05-08T11:30:00.000-07:00

So I am beginning to take liberties with the definition of burger. I guess I should really name this series "What would ___ dress up like if ___ pretended to be a burger. " Today, it would be "What would sausage and french toast dress up like if sausage and french toast pretended to be a burger."

I made french toast using the recipe I documented here for Andrea's Happyoca Strhubarb Breakfast. Cut them with a cookie cutter to make nice little rounds. If in the Bay Area, the Trader Joe's around here carry a wonderful Cinnamon Twist Bread from Semifreddi's. I think they're a kind of a regional super bakery that sells their stuff at local markets. In all my years of french toast making, I think that Semifreddi's cinnamon twist bread is the best for french toast.

And then I fried up some pork sausage that I procured at my favorite Santa Cruz grocery, Shopper's Corner. They sell sausage without the casings at Shopper's Corner which is very convenient for making patties. I guess I could've gone Jimmy Dean but this was better. Incidentally I also used some of the farmer's market strawberries that Bettina had bought without asking her. She went off on a totally unplanned trip to New Mexico to do nothing but look at pretty rocks. So before the strawberries turned to mush I decided I'd steal them from her.

If I had really wanted to make this fancy I probably would've found some mascarpone to top it with. But it was good the way it was.

This is what sausage and french toast would look like if sausage and french toast pretended to be a burger:

National Burger Month 05/07/2010: Halibut and Fried Ginger

2010-05-07T22:44:00.000-07:00

I lied... I'm not going back to beef just yet. Just one more non-beef burger. And then I can go all meaty.

I was browsing the FoodBuzz today and ran into this recipe for steamed halibut with fried ginger from the blog My Fiance Likes It So It Must Be Good. Thank you, MyBFLikesIt! It reminded me of a dish my mom used to make for me and I realized I wanted to adapt it burger-style. I guess that's why I asked around on Facebook if a burger needed to be fried or grilled to be called a burger. The consensus was that yes, it wouldn't be a burger unless it were fried or grilled, though some intrepid souls suggested braising might be good. In the end, this discussion was moot because while I did steam the fish, I finished it on the pan. Was I sliding down the slippery slope to fish cake? Who knows? Anyway, I enjoyed this one.

For the buns, I turned back to an older burger I did a couple of years ago. I made onigiri-yaki "buns" (recipe here). Onigiri-yaki are for all intents and purposes roasted rice balls and are fairly bun-like. I think for many of my Asian inspired burgers I'm going to go this way. And before you say "Hold on homeslice, that's not a burger bun!" I will point out that there is precedent for this. There's the SPAM Rice Burger from a place called Freshness Burger (which is definitely not a burger-- it's a slab of SPAM!) and there's also the MOS Rice Burger which uses a bun made of rice and millet. It figures these places are both Japanese fast food chains. I tried a MOS Rice Burger when I was in Singapore and I really liked it.

Back to the fishy business.

For two halibut burgers:
1 pound of fresh halibut filet, diced and divided in two (I felt almost bad for dicing really beautiful halibut; I wanted to pull out my charcoal grill and just throw the filets on it.)
2 scallions sliced thinly
2 cloves of garlic sliced thinly
2 tbsp ginger sliced into thin half inch strips
2 teaspoons sesame oil
pinch of sugar
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon mirin
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 tbsp canola oil

HOWTO:
1. Prepare your steamer
2, On a small plate or saucer, toss some scallions, 1/4 of the ginger, and 1/2 of the garlic. Form the chopped halibut into patties.and lay one over the scallions, ginger and garlic. Drizzle the fish with 1/2 tsp mirin and 1/2 tsp soy sauce. Drizzle 1/2 tsp of sesame oil on the halibut. Finally, sprinkle a pinch of sugar, and season with salt and pepper. Do the same for the other mound of fish chunks.
3. Place the plates into the steamer and steam for about 7 minutes-- don't over steam it because you'll finish these in the frying pan.
4. While the fish is steaming, turn your attention to a hot pan and heat up the canola oil and the rest of the sesame oil. Toss the remaining ginger into the pan and fry until it browns, about 5-10 minutes. Just in time for the fish to be done.
5. Carefully scoop the now steamed fish from the steamer and lay it onto the frying ginger. After about 30-45 seconds, or just enough time to brown a little, flip the burgers over and brown the other side. Do the same for the other burger.

Serve over prepared onigiri-yaki.

That should really fulfill the non-beef quota for the week, Tomorrow, real meat.

National Burger Month 05/06/2010: Veggie Burger #1, shrooms and salsa

2010-05-06T23:46:00.000-07:00

It's the sixth, I've had three days of burgers in a row, and I'm already jonesing for something veggie. I don't know if this is a good sign. But I don't know how to make a veggie burger unless it's the kind I take out of the freezer.

Found this recipe by weheartfood that looked really good, but I didn't follow it to the T. Wish I could say that I actually knowingly adapted it, but all the changes (mostly in method) were a result of my laziness and carelessness.

My mushroom burger:
1 pound of mushrooms (equal parts crimini, portobello and shiitake), chopped
half an onion grated
cup of parmesan cheese grated
4 cloves of garlic minced
2/3 cup of panko breadcrumbs
1 egg
1 cup of grated parmesan
handfull of parsley chopped
couple of glugs of olive oil

Save for half the breadcrumbs and half the parmesan, mix everything together and sauté the mixture over medium heat until the mushrooms cook down, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and mix the rest of the stuff in. Let it cool down for about 10-15 minutes.

You can work on the salsa while everything settles. About 4 plum tomatoes (1 pound) diced finely, half an onion diced finely, half a jalapeño pepper minced, about 2-3 tablespoons of cilantro chopped. Juice of half a lime, and salt and pepper to taste. Set aside so you can top your burger with it.

Now return to the mushrooms. Form into patties and fry in a glug or two of olive oil for five minutes each side. I think this makes about four mushroom burgers.

Eat your burger and feel good about having met the veggie quota. Tomorrow, go back to beef.

National Burger Month 05/05/2010: Karl Marx's Birthday Special-- The Grillete

2010-05-05T23:54:00.000-07:00

May 5 is a special day. Most people say it's Cinco de Mayo, and the last time we did this we celebrated with a special Cinco de Mayo burger. But this day is also notable because it is the anniversary of Karl Marx's birth. Happy birthday, mein freund!

keeping it social

Over dinner, I got to introduce more people to the wonderful world of National Burger Month! I figured that it would be nice to celebrate today with something that our buddy Karl might have eaten back in the day. Frikadelle is made of different minced meats (usually a mixture of pork, veal or beef) and a few spices. In other places it could be called a meatball. But tonight we're calling it a burger. Some would say that the American burger traces its roots to this very German dish (and many a red blooded American would vehemently disagree with this because the American institution that is the hamburger cannot be tainted by anything Euro, and by extension commie). But these little patties of goodness do go back centuries, long before the King started flipping Whoppers. And I kind of like the image of Karl Marx tossing back a few of these suckas with his friend Friedrich Engels over a few steins of bier (on Friedrich's tab no doubt-- Karl pretty much lived off of the playboy Engels's wallet). And so in his honor, we eat frikadelle. Or more precisely, grillete, which is what they call these bad boys in the old German Democratic Republic. If we're doing Marx, we might as well do it East Berlin style.

The frikadelle (AKA grillete):
1/2 pound ground chuck (those who know me know that I only like my beef from organic grass-fed cows named Chuck)
1/2 pound ground pork
1 egg
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, grated
1/2 cup of parsley minced
salt and pepper to taste

Mix it all up and fry at medium-high heat.

Top with sauerkraut. I bought some really delicious sauerkraut from this stall at the Santa Cruz Farmer's Market called Farmhouse Culture. Really delicious sauerkraut.

Place on toasted buns and plate them. Serve next to your copy of Marx's Kapital Vol. 1 so that the international working class can infuse your dinner with plenty of love and goodness.

this is what democracy looks like in the daytime

National Burger Month 05/04/2010: Prosciutto Cheeseburger

2010-05-04T21:55:00.000-07:00

the only good kind of oil spill

So I think I might actually make a month out of this. Of course this would mean that I have to make up the two days I missed-- but that's not a problem.

For the second day in a row, I get to introduce somebody to the wonders of National Burger Month. And that's kind of fun. Of course, being that it's only officially my second day of NBM I'm still laying the infrastructure-- I did not plan on celebrating this month all over again and I have to grease the wheels, so to speak. We haven't really blogged anything here in burger central for a long time and much of my existing burgerblogging systems need to be dusted off. I couldn't find my tripod. I had to get the good china out. And the biggest challenge is that I somehow have to make do without an actual grill this time around. Sean had reclaimed his old BBQ grill and I will have to strategize for a whole month's worth of burgers anew and not have a grill to work with. I do have a few surprises coming down the pike so I am getting a little excited about this whole endeavor. The best part is that I will be personally accountable for fattening a few people who have not ever been party to National Burger Month.

Today's burger is one of those clean out the fridge burgers... I know this is not an elegant way to start NBM, but oh well. The whole thing wasn't planned. It hadn't really entered my mind until Kate brought out her wonderful Santa Cruz Farmer's Market burgers when I visited her place a few days ago-- the night before NBM started. But those awesome burgers planted the seeds. As of last night I really hadn't given this thing much thought. But this morning, in the shower, I started thinking of all the great burgers I could make to continue in the tradition of my last big burger celebration. And so here we are.

I had a bunch of prosciutto in the fridge. And I had some more of that wonderful New Leaf organic ground chuck from grass fed cows. And I had my old stand by recipe (or a variation thereof). And I had a dream.... and that's all it takes to make the world a better place.

And so here it is. For the burger:

1/2 pound organic ground chuck from grass fed cows

a bit of salt

a bit of pepper

half a cup of grated onion with juice

about a teaspoon of worcestershire sauce

about a teaspoon of Sriracha, the sauce of champions

and a generous dusting of garlic powder

Toss it all together and grill or fry at medium-high for about three minutes on each side.

Top with melted cheddar cheese and a few strips of prosciutto.

I use buttered brioche buns for the bread.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

And we're back!

2010-05-03T23:24:00.000-07:00

The Spring brings many things. Baseball's back, been going on for a couple of weeks now. On May 1st, we celebrate International Day of Labor. May 5th is not only Cinco de Mayo, it is also my good friend Karl's birthday. The second week of May is Bike Week. May also marks the return of this blog. It wakes from its slumber because there are things to celebrate-- namely, National Burger Month.

While I don't think I will be doing that crazy 31-days-worth-of-burgers thing, I do think that I should celebrate the occasion by bringing out the beef (and other minced foodstuffs) every now and then. I'll try to be as creative as I was back then, but I have no promises.

I start with what has become my standard recipe for burger. In my past month-long celebration, I did it all: fancy burgers, simple burgers, no nonsense burgers. But through trial and error, this particular configuration has become my very own basic burger. Here it is, the recipe for two burgers:

2/3 pounds organic, grassfed ground chuck

1/2 cup of grated white onion with onion juices

a bit of garlic salt

a bit of freshly ground black pepper

a couple of squeezes of Sriracha (aka hot cock sauce)

And to garnish:

a bit of white onion caramelized

some cheddar to top it all off

Grilled or fried at medium-high heat. 2 1/2 to 3 minutes per side.

Burger at dusk, resting like a jaguar, ready to strike.

Pretty good, if I should say so myself. Welcome to National Burger Month.

Before posting this I looked through all my previous burger posts and reminisced a little. Oh those were good days, simple days. I get misty eyed thinking of some of my old friends like döner kebab burger and Jamaican Jerk burger. They were great pals. Here are my favorites, a few of the bad mofos:

Döner Kebab Burger

Hoisin Beef and Broccoli Burger

Barbecue Pork Burger on Corn Bread

Jucy Lucy

Bulgogi Burger with Kimchi

Jamaican Jerk Burger with Orange Chipotle Mayo

There were others too. All of them were dear, dear friends and I miss them all.

On hold.

2010-01-23T10:39:00.000-08:00

Obviously, this one hasn't gone anywhere in a long time.

But I'm here!

Oktnxbbye.

CFP: National Soy Foods Month - Beyond the Stirfry

2009-03-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

Call for Proposals

April is National Soy Foods Month. Soy products are highly misunderstood by non-vegetarians and non-Asians as flavorless and unimaginative. In April, we intend to celebrate National Soy Foods Month by preparing a dish with soy foods every day of the month. The aim of this event is to stretch the soy beyond the stirfry.

We invite all interested soy fooders to send in proposals for dinner. We would especially welcome proposals that reflect on the challenges of dealing with preconceptions about soy products that incorporate novel ways of preparation, or bring into view the limitations and/or possibilities of moving beyond the stirfry.

Proposals can be rough sketches or detailed recipes. There are thirty days in April, so the deadline for proposals is April 29

National Soy Foods Month follows 2008's National Burger Month wherein we celebrated the month of May with 31 days of burger.

Guidelines

1. Dishes must have at least one ingredient with soy.
2. Soy sauce is a condiment and not considered a main ingredient. It is welcomed, but not required.
3. Any style of cooking is encouraged. Despite the event being called "Beyond the Stirfry," stirfrying is acceptable.
4. Soy does not mean vegetarian. We welcome vegetarian but do not require it.
5. Dishes do not need to be the main course. We welcome amuse bouche or dessert recipes.

Examples

As part of National Burger Month 2008, we created our version of the tofu burger which undermined the qualities usually found in tofu burgers, particularly that it contained no beef. The tofu was marinated overnight in rendered beef fat and prepared with a Thai green chili dressing which highlighted the tofu and complemented the beef's robustness.

Tofu burger with Thai green curry sauce, topped with organic bacon

The Triumphant Return (now with more Bacon!)

2009-01-14T11:33:00.000-08:00

We have been way to busy to keep up with the blog. But enough is enough.

In December, my friend Jordi was keen enough to post this gem on my Facebook page:
If I Die A Bacon-Related Death, I'd Like It To Be Because Of This

The resulting outburst of chatter was exciting. Clearly, this was a topic dear to everyone's hearts. Excerpts follow:

Me: OMG... Must do tomorrow.
Aileen: here are no words. none. greasy elegance rolled into one. can you weave other designs? do it Mike!! do it Jords (or did you already make this?)
Jordi: i'm gonna weave me a f*ckin' bacon blanket and wrap myself in it!!
Me: This guy's only mistake was that he didn't put chorizo in with the cheese.
Tracy: I may just have to surprise my husband with this one...but yeah, I agree with Mike - sausage and even some hash browns...
Jordi: or wild mushrooms and goat cheese...mmm. it can be the new crust. just add your favorite filling
Ria: But I do agree, it's missing more ingredients. Please update if any of you try it! Very curious....
SooJee: tell us how this comes out Mike and take pics:)
Tracy: Wild mushrooms and goat cheese? Sorry, but there's nothing gourmet about a basket weaved with bacon...
Jordi: not only is it gourmet, woven bacon is couture!
Me: Only bacon can turn gourmet into gourm-yay.

I didn't get to do anything with the idea until Christmas when I was asked to do a little appetizer for Christmas dinner. So here we go. (Yes many of you have seen this already but as I have not cooked anything interesting in the past month, we will do reruns for now)

To address my primary contention in the conversation above that the original blogger didn't do enough with his bacon, I decided to make this a surf and turf. We used some steamed shrimp and some herbed goat cheese instead of the simple shredded cheddar that the original blogger used.

First we weave le bacon. (Jordi said it was couture so we have to use francaise when we can)

Et voila, le bacon mat.

We fry the bacon.

We add the goat cheese and shrimps. (Kosher this is definitely not)

We roll the bacon.

And the finished product!

Which our President-Elect then proceeds to devour, not mindful of the other guests at holiday dinner who wanted in on the bacon fun.

The overall verdict was that it was delicious. It was good. But the preparation left a lot of room for improvement. The bacon fell apart when I attempted to slice it into pinwheels for presentation. Somebody suggested that I perhaps finish it in the oven to seal in the goodness and to firm up the bacon. The surf-and-turf-like combination of pork and shrimp was great and the herbed goat cheese was a good balancing note.

A future possible application, per Paolo, Jordi and Ria: weave the bacon and place it into metal colander with curved bottom to bake-- result would be a bacon bowl! We could then pile on all the toppings our hearts desire.

Epilogue

I was going to do a repeat of the dish on New Year's Eve, substituting scallops for the shrimp. Because we were strapped for time I never go to do this. Instead, I just individually wrapped the scallops in bacon the next day and speared the whole clump of goodness with rosemarry to pin it all together, then grilled the little suckas. While not as aesthetically pleasing as a bacon mat, they were still pretty and were great New Year's amuse bouches.

Presidential Debate #4: The Last Debate

2008-10-15T23:10:00.000-07:00

I zipped this off with 10 minutes left at work. This is it for the debate series. It's also Elena's going away party. Sad.

---

Loddy Doddy I love to party
Cause alot of trouble and bother everybody
6 6 6, nobody likes it when I kick it like this
Loddy Doddy, it's the democratic party
McCain done come and fuck everybody
6 6 6, nobody likes it when I kick it like this

HIt it!
I want to rock right now. (holdup.)
Hit it!
Got my man barack right now
20 more days and it's time to get down
And he's ill/ he's internationally known
And he's known to rock the microphone
Cause McCain is stoopid, and you know he rages
And his voters can't seem to engage us
And Barack's got the promises and maybe the answers
And his Veep's got some hair enhancers
Ahead in the polls, Ten points he rolls
And McCain's numbers aint done nothing but fall
I like the way that shit's come loose
Sarah Palin's done shot up another moose
So.

Loddy Doddy I love to party
Cause alot of trouble and bother everybody
6 6 6, nobody likes it when I kick it like this
Loddy Doddy, it's the democratic party
McCain done come and fuck everybody
6 6 6, nobody likes it when I kick it like this

Hit it!
So it's time for the third debate
And everyone knows that McCain's too late
But I gotta give you a little fair warning
Since the other party's got a shit storm coming
They're gonna play the real dirty blame game
They all say Baracks' just all about celeb fame
And they'll talk about Ayers
And they'll talk about Wright
And they'll talk about ACORN
But it's all the same they're trying to put a little fright.
But it's all the same
I see McCain calling it a night.

So.
Loddy Doddy I love to party
Cause alot of trouble and bother everybody
6 6 6, nobody likes it when I kick it like this
Loddy Doddy, it's the democratic party
McCain done come and fuck everybody
6 6 6, nobody likes it when I kick it like this

---

Debate food report

Bunch o' bottles of beer
Bruschettas of tomato and basil by Elena
Broiled potatoes by Elena
Grilled padrone peppers!
And Sean's special Dutch bitterballen!!! Look he has a recipe and photos from my kitchen.
Oh and Elena's apple crumble dessert

Drunk factor: meh...

The bitterballen were so much more interesting than the actual debate. Expecting more guests at the debate party/farewell Elena bash, Sean arrived promptly at 5:30 with a bowl of meat mix (I hereby dub the bowl Gigantor). And while we struggled with keeping the deepfry at a constant 370 degrees fahrenheit, the bitterballen came out all crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside. Awesome. So much thanks to Sean for bringing over Gigantor and making us bitterballen.

Presidential Debate #3: Town Hall and the Hawaii vs. Arizona Burger Battle

2008-10-10T22:58:00.000-07:00

It's time for this week's edition of my debating rap. Debate is 6PM on Tuesday. We're watching it at our place...We might barbecue too. I might make burgers (since Andrea's presence has shocked me out of my burger making leave of absence). Come on by if you want.

Check check... One two. Check check.

So. I'm not as prolific as my man Jay Z.
But I gotta keep it going cause McCain is crazy.
And I know I'm running out of time
Trying to sell a busted rhyme
But this time this time
Got my tequila and some lime
If McCain is Megatron Obama's Optimus Prime
So last week I had my snacks and drinks
And Palin had her fur minks
In four weeks I'll have Cor-vaw-see-yay
I'll say "Prost!" The glass clinks
So the old grandpa he's starting to freak
Tossin out his message going all negative
Need his metamucil now it's his laxative
And again the Keating five's a gift continuing to give
Because the shits hit the fan for him
And his message was always all wack and dim
And he can't spout any change
And his chances are slim
Running on empty he don't got no sanity
Maybe he'd have done better had he chosen Tim Pawlenty
But I'm not bemoaning this turn of the events
Only place safe for him is Fox with Sean Hannity
Michigan is gone and now he defends the red states
And on tuesday a town hall number two of the debates
At 6PM Tuesday night one-oh-five on Younger Way
We're gonna hit it on the DVR doesn't matter if you're lates
Now I'm not so sure about the next moderatuh
It's NBC the original G Tom Brokaw
In the tank with John McCain, G's a democrat hatuh
But the polls they say it's time MacDaddy seeyou latuh.

Uhuh. Uhuh.

---

Debate food report

big bottle of wine
lots of bottles of beer
Afsaneh's rice
Salad with bunch o walnuts, cranberries and swiss chard
No drinking games. Just drink.

The Hawaii vs. Arizona Burger Battle

Recipes are below. The Hawaiian pineapple teriyaki was pretty good. I'm not sure which burger won. Some people liked the versatility of the dry-rubbed burger (it went well over the Iranian rice dish that we also had-- but a burger with rice and no bun is not an American burger in my books). Yet another person claimed that the Hawaiian pineapple teriyaki sauce went very well over the Arizona burger but that's just too easy. While non-exceptionalism is okay, we like our burgers to challenge us by themselves.

I needed:
2 pounds of grassfed chuck, divided into two batches
formed into sliders, about 4 ounces each

Hawaii: Pineapple teriyaki soy marinade

1 (14 ounce) can pineapple chunks, with no sugar added juice
6 garlic cloves, chopped
1 inch ginger, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons mirin
3 dashes sesame oil
1 teaspoon crushed red chili pepper (probably closer to 1 1/2)
1/2 cup brown sugar

1. Mix all in saucepan
2. Simmer for five minutes
3. Blend with immersion blender

Arizona: Southwestern Spice Rub

1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
8 dried chilies -- stemmed and seeded
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper

1. Cook cumin and coriander seeds in a small skillet over low heat, stirring constantly, for 3 minutes.
2. Combine seeds, chilies, and remaining ingredients in a blender; process until mixture resembles coarse powder.

Presidential Debate #2: The Veeps

2008-09-30T22:44:00.000-07:00

Here's this week's stupid rap.

---

It's debating time again on Thursday night at six. So we know what that means-- I have to make another installment of the debatin raps. Today we do the old skool flava at the IHOP on Younger Way.

(cue the two turntables, got the microphone going)
It's on. You don't stop.
Lets-up-jump-the-boogie-to-the-bang-bang-boogie
We-got-VPs-on-the-telly. Yall think you can defeat me?
Well its on. Let's rock now, you don't stop. Keep on. You don't stop.

I got I got I got I got snacks and drinks
She got some fur minks
Five kids on ice rinks
I don't gotta stop and think.
Doncha think? I'll get back to ya
What? That aint no answa
Gotta check with her old senate poppa
Sucka MCs don't get much higha
Hockey mom and hockey skates
Hocka-loogy this-uh high stakes
Hock my watch I think I'll do
The economy is poo.
We got debatin we ain't kiddin
Cuz she's chillin like a villin.
Thursday IHOP on Younger Way
You know USA aint A-OK
My man Joe Biden on the stump
Smilin like an old fool
He'll run his mouth off and kick the Palin bump
Say "You're fired" like the Trump
So six o clock no time for hatin
Rearin his head it's Mr. Putin
We gotta pop it like a palin
Now it's high time for debatin

It's on. You don't stop.
Lets-up-jump-the-boogie-to-the-bang-bang-boogie
We-got-VPs-on-the-telly. Yall think you can defeat me?
Well its on. Let's rock now, you don't stop. Keep on. You don't stop.

---

Food report

Big bottle of wine
Lots of bottles of beer
Fruit
Bunch o' Trader Joe's pizzas (tarte flambes)
Chips and salsa
Debate Night Bingo but I was told there was a better one here.

Drunk factor: high

Presidential Debate #1

2008-09-26T22:31:00.000-07:00

I figure with the debates coming up, and with my crispy new television, we have great reasons to imbibe and eat.

Verbatim from the email sent 9/25/08...

---

I just wanted to share my little rap because I think I'm proud of my rapping abilities. Jay-Z is going down.

(cue the human beatbox in the background, two turntables and a microphone)

Not waitin for debatin
If it aint happin there be sumtin
It's for real, we're not playin
Maybe some hatin for McCaiiii----- tin

Yo. You can't just suspend a campaign
Like the RNC for a little rain
Down in NoLa hurricain
I guess it got heat off Sarah Paaiiiiiiii---lin

So six o clock this comin Friday
My man O to the B to the A-M-A
Mack Daddy'n DC, that's just crappay
Economic ca-tas-tro-phay
We'll be watchin the debatin
This comin Friday I'm just sayin
If it happins let it happin
Come on over we'll be watchin

---

Ahem.

Debate food report

big bottle of wine
many bottles of beer
drinking game
cheese and crackers
chips and salsa

drunk factor: high

Wanna-Kalbi

2008-07-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

I wanted to do kalbi, but I don't presume to have a real Korean recipe, so I did some research online, mostly here on this thread on ChowHound, and took bits and pieces from different places. But who's going to find Korean pear in Santa Cruz, California?

3 pounds of beef short rib cut thinly (I believe the term is "flanken" if you want to speak butcher)
1/4 cup sesame oil
1/2 cup good soy sauce (I didn't have any good soy sauce so I brought out the brute-force extra-strength Filipino soy sauce)
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar
3-4 scallions chopped
1/4 cup sesame seeds
black pepper (to taste)

and of course... 1/2 can to 1 can of Coca-Cola (to taste)... better if it's the Mexican coke in bottle so that it has real sugar rather than corn syrup.

The phosophoric acid in the Coca-Cola helps to tenderize the beef. This was all left to marinate for at least 8 hours.

These were barbecued on a medium-hot grill, flipped often. The beef is cut really thin and is almost falling apart after marinating for 8 hours so it burns really easily, so you have to be on the ball with this. I think each cut took about 5 minutes to cook.

It wasn't like walking down the street in K-Town in NYC, but this wanna-kalbi was actually pretty good.

It's been a while since I blogged-- but not because I haven't cooked. I actually intended to blog more often than I did this month, taking time to take pictures, but it just didn't happen. I feel bad because I was also tagged to tag and I passed the tag on, but I haven't actually blogged much in July. Oh well. Onward!

Internet Memes and the Foodie Tag

2008-07-21T12:23:00.000-07:00

I have been tagged! This is my first foodie blog meme, which is a whole lot more pleasant than other internet memes that have been circulating around. I mean being rickrolled is just not fun. I guess it's funny haha but really, rickrolling is not that funny. Especially when it seems to have leaped out of the internet. I picked up the phone at work and I heard Rick once. Some other forms of internet memes are great too. Like lolcats, which I can't get enough of. But foodie blog tag? Good stuff.

So thank you Natashya from Living in the Kitchen with Puppies for the tag. Sorry it took me so long to respond. So many things going on right now. But before I go on with this, I'd like to say that Natashya has a wonderful recipe for apricot ginger ice cream that I just made this weekend, and it came out wonderfully.

So here are the meme rules.

Tag Rules:

Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on the blog.
Write six random things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post.
Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

...and here are 6 random things about myself.

1) I like to dress up as food items during halloween. See? Here and here.
2) I like post-modernity in its food form, of which Garden Burger Meatless Riblets are the supreme example: it is a meatless meat that pretends to be a meat that pretends to be a meat. How great is that?
3) I enjoy deep fried Twinkies.
4) I own three bicycles and I want another.
5) My Aeropress espresso maker has displaced my Kitchenaid stand mixer as my favorite kitchen gadget.
6) Just once, I'd like to walk down the street and find myself stuck in a movie musical, with people doing Busby Berkeley choreographed arrangements while singing in unison.

I tag... well I tag some folks who've made some great stuff I've tried myself.

Dhanggit from Dhanggit's Kitchen
Maybelle's mom from Feeding Maybelle
Lisa from Jersey Girl Cooks
Tinker and Tugger from Tinker Culture
Janet from Gourmet Traveler
Peter from Kalofagas

If you are too busy or tired to play we will all fully understand. If not, I look forward to hearing from you.

Hoity-toity Mac and Cheese

2008-06-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

This is a mac and cheese I last made while on a ski vacation a while back. While my friends were on the slopes, I stayed in our cabin and cooked up some mac and cheese and tomato soup, with tons of kitchen equipment that I put in a hiking pack and carried through the woods and into our place. (ok.. it wasn't really Rocky Balboa training in the Soviet Union to fight Ivan Drago kind of labor, but I did have to carry my cast iron pan, my immersion blender, and all my food supplies through the woods in thigh deep snow) Sadly, Kay's Cabins near South Lake Tahoe in Kirkwood, California closed shop.

Anyway, California is cold and cloudy right now, and that is enough context for comfort food, especially with the discomfiting smell of Northern California forest wildfires wafting into my house.

Mac and Cheese

Stuff:
1 tbsp butter
1/2 cup celery, chopped
1 cup red bell pepper, chopped into 1/2 inch squares
1/2 pound penne pasta
1 1/2 cup half and half
1 1/2 cup whipping cream
1/2 pound cambazola (or other mild blue cheese), cut into small cubes
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
2 egg yolks
paprika
salt
pepper
1/2 cup bacon, diced (optional for the non-veggie)
1 cup grated parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

In a pan, sauté the celery and the bell pepper in butter until just soft. Season with salt and pepper. Also, now is the time to fry up the bacon if you're using it.

Boil the pasta until al dente. While it is getting ready to boil, combine whipping cream, half and half and cheese until cheese is melted in a small saucepan, stirring occasionally. While the cheese is melting, beat the egg yolks in a separate, heat resistant bowl and set aside. After the cheese fully melts, stir in the celery seed and season with paprika, salt and pepper. Pour half of this mixture into the egg yolks, stirring constantly. And then return the egg yolk and cheese sauce mixture back in with the rest of the mixture.

After draining the pasta, mix the cheese sauce and the veggies (and bacon) in the same pan as the pasta. Transfer all of this into a baking pan. Top with parmesan cheese. Bake at 400 for about 20 minutes or until the sauce is bubbling and the top of the dish is beginning to brown.

I like to drizzle a little truffle oil over the whole thing when it's done. And I suspect shaved truffle will do nicely, but I'll only do that if somebody is nice enough to give me some truffle. Someone? Anyone?

It's a hoity-toity mac and cheese and I'm not apologetic about this all.

Thai-inspired Apricot Chicken with Coconut Rice

2008-06-25T23:01:00.000-07:00

Apricots are here. Yay. I've never really made anything savory with apricots. Actually I don't usually use apricots--I prefer peaches and nectarines. So this apricot thingy is a first for me. This particular dish is inspired by one of my favorite Thai dishes, mango chicken. Apricots work pretty well as a mango substitute. They're similarly sweet, though apricots do not have the mango tanginess, so a little bit of citrus was needed for the sauce.

The sauce was a variation on sweet and sour. I suspect it would work just as well with fried fish rather than chicken. The banana leaf is not necessary, but steamed with the coconut rice, it gave the rice just a bit more fragrance.

All measurements approximate.

Stuff for apricot sauce:
6 apricots sliced and peeled (peeling is not necessary, but I wanted a more uniform texture)
1/2 cup cilantro chopped
4 tbsp soy sauce (I used half and half fine Japanese soy sauce and Filipino soy sauce, but any soy sauce would do)
3 tbsp ginger chopped
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp sake (rice wine vinegar is okay)
1 tbsp sriracha hot sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
juice of 1/2 lime
zest of 1/2 lime

Stuff for chicken:
4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, sliced thinly into strips
1 cup white flour
5 tbsp clarified butter
1 red bell pepper sliced thinly

Stuff for coconut rice:
2 cups jasmine rice
1 1/2 cup water
1 can light coconut milk
1 tbsp salt
1 small banana leaf (4 inches by 2 inches)

Place all the sauce ingredients in a food processor and puree. The desired flavor is sweet, salty, sour and spicy all at once. If it's too spicy, squeeze some more lime in there and add a little sugar. More fish sauce counteracts sweetness (be careful!).

Prepare the rice in a rice cooker. Just toss in all the ingredients, placing the banana leaf into the pot last. If you do not have a rice cooker, use a pot with a heavy lid. You might want to oil the bottom of the pan lightly so that the rice doesn't stick. It should cook for about 15-20 minutes.

In a flat container, drag the chicken strips around the white flour until all of them are covered. Fry them over medium-hot in clarified butter until golden brown on both sides. This should take about 5-10 minutes per chicken strip. You don't have to use clarified butter, but doing so reduces risk of burning the butter so I prefer the clarified stuff. Once the chicken is fried, remove from heat.

In another pan, (or the pan you used to cook the chicken with the butter cleaned out), place the fried chicken strips along with the bell pepper slices. Pour the apricot sauce in with the chicken and simmer over medium heat for about 10 minutes or until the bell pepper is soft.

Serve over the coconut rice.

This was my entry to the Leftover Queen's July Royal Foodie Joust. This as well as other bloggers' recipes can be found here.

June 14 is National Strawberry Shortcake Day

2008-06-15T17:47:00.000-07:00

June 14 is my mother's birthday. But I didn't get to celebrate with her because she's 3,000 miles away. Instead, I gave her a phonecall and I visited Santa Cruz's Swanton Berry Farm to get myself some of their strawberry shortcake.

Just a short drive of a few miles north of Santa Cruz on Highway 1, right on the Pacific coast, is Swanton Ranch. I initially wanted to bike up and eat my shortcake there but the thought of the ride back to Santa Cruz after pigging out on strawberry shortcake deterred me from doing just that. I chose the easier route of hopping in the car and going there.

Swanton Berry Farm is a 100% union shop (their farmstand shop is all about Cesar Chavez). All the farm workers are part of the United Farm Workers. All their produce is also organic and the berry varieties they offer are better tasting, lower yielding berries. They do great work, and their strawberries are beautiful.

Aside from the fresh berries, they do u-pick and they make great jams. But today's not about jam-- Swanton sells strawberry shortcake in ready-to-go plastic tubs in their chiller. I got a couple to take home.

The shortcake was perfect. The cake itself wasn't excruciatingly sweet. It was just right. The berries didn't taste like anything was added to them to boost their flavor. They were fresh yo.

Swanton Berry Farms: union labor + organic strawberries = delicious strawberry shortcake

June 13 is Kitchen Klutzes of America Day (or "How not to make binatog by burning your house down")

2008-06-11T10:04:00.000-07:00

I'm a little early for this celebration, but I feel that celebrating it is apt. June 13 is Kitchen Klutzes of America Day.

Method:

1) Go to FoodBuzz Featured Publisher dinner at Gochi Japanese Tapas in Cupertino. Enjoy wonderful and inventive tapas Japanese-style. Try the pizza (on a very light cracker-like crust), the onigiri yaki (with salmon mayonnaise), the fried chicken with eggplant and the delicious unagi fried rice. Meet a few great folks from FoodBuzz (thanks folks!).

Yaki Onigiri, much better than my own attempt

2) Go home and try to make binatog. Binatog is a Filipino snack made from hominy, sugar, coconut and milk, served sort of like a corn parfait.

3) Turn on the wrong burner on an electric stove and not notice that a different burner from the one you intended is glowing red.

4) Smell the noxious fumes from burning dish towel.

5) Panic.

In addition to not leaving a dish towel directly on a burner (gas or electric), do not leave microfiber dish towels on hot stainless steel pot lid, or else they will smolder and ruin your pretty, stainless steel pot lid.

By the way: the binatog attempt failed because ignorant as I was about how to prepare hominy, I did not boil my dried corn in lime-water to remove the corn germ. I will try again this weekend.

June 6 is National Doughnut Day: Beignets New Orleans-style

2008-06-07T11:08:00.001-07:00

Beignets from scratch

Spending my last afternoon of vacation just sitting on my ass, I decided that I could be more productive with my ass-sitting by injecting my ass-sitting activities with some ass-growing assistance. In a fortuitous twist of fate, I heard it through the grapevine that June the 6th is National Doughnut Day. And so for the sake of ass-sitting/ass-growing multitasking (and perhaps fueled at a subconscious level by my hosting of two Canadians at my house the previous night), I decided to celebrate this great day by making donuts.

But which donuts to make? I've always loved how airy Krispy Kreme donuts are, and I knew that they make yeast-raised donuts, as opposed to the cake donuts common at Dunkin Donuts (which are painfully absent in California). But for today, I decided beignets were right. Donuts need not have holes after all.

My trusty Joy of Cooking by Rombauch and Becker, et al. had a recipe for beignets that called for butter and four eggs. Additionally, I found several recipes online, most notably this one at the New Orleans Cuisine Blog. These were two very different approaches to the beignet-- the Rombauchs' recipe would no doubt be cakier and denser. And the NOLA Cuisine Blog recipe would be fluffier. I chose the latter-- I like the fluff. My only change was an increase in the required sugar because I like my donut dough on the sweeter side.

And just in case those flopped, I also got a box of the famous New Orleans Cafe du Monde beignet mix as an emergency backup.

I invited Elsa and Sean over so that I could have companions in my celebration, and so that I could have people around to keep me from eating all the donuts myself and passing out in the kitchen, waking up in the morning on the floor with powdered sugar all over me.

1 packet active dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water (110 degrees F)
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup evaporated milk
3 1/2 - 3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/8 Cup Shortening
About 2 -3 inches of vegetable oil in a saucepan
Loads of powdered sugar

I won't reproduce the instructions anymore as they can be found in the blog post I refer to above. It seemed in the end that my donut dough didn't flop. And I found myself with a boxful of Cafe du Mond beignet mix unopened. I decided to make those anyway so that I could compare the homemade to the mix. The ones I made from scratch were definitely fluffier and plumper. But they also tasted yeasty. Maybe if I switched to a different yeast I could lose the sour undertones produced by the yeast, and I'll have to look into that in the future. The cakemix donuts were also tasty and did not have the yeasty flavor. They were also less sweet. I don't know which ones I prefer. My from-scratch beignets I feel more warmth towards because I pored over them, urging the yeast to bubble and froth, but the New Orleans French Market Cafe Du Monde beignets made me want to have crawdads and okra. So in the end, it's a toss-up.

All told, I think I ate about a dozen donuts in the past twelve hours. I have powdered sugar all over my clothes and all over my kitchen and I'm still sitting on my ass.

Cake-mix beignets

National Burger Month Day 31: Sirloin Burger with Seared Foie Gras and Shiitake Stirfry

2008-06-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

Is this really it? Thirty-one days of burger-influenced gluttony are finally over. I am both saddened and elated to be done with this thing. I think I will not do a month-long food celebration for a long time, no matter how wonderful the food I wish to celebrate is. On the other hand, the past month has been a good time. It's really funny how community formed around little round patties of chopped stuff, even if people didn't particularly like little round patties of chopped stuff.

For my last burger of the month, I wanted to do the most indulgent burger I could do. I figured that I would try to replicate Daniel Boulud's extravagant burgers, but from the outset, these were impossibilities. Boulud makes a burger with Kobe wagyu beef, braised shortribs, truffle and foie gras. I cannot get wagyu beef easily, and I do not want to spend $75 for 2 ounces of black truffle. So instead of doing an exact replica, I tried to incorporate whatever I could.

My burgers were made with grass-fed organic sirloin that I milled myself. These were seasoned simply with salt and pepper and grilled to medium. I topped each burger with foie gras, which I seared on a griddle to get the juices running. On top of this, I placed some sliced shiitake mushrooms which I stir-fried in truffle oil (which were my closest substitutes for real truffles). Finally, I shaved some gruyere over the whole works.

The mushrooms and foie gras definitely gave the burgers added depth and richness. The burgers, unfortunately, were underseasoned (I could've sworn I salted the bejeezus out of them). But in the end, the flavors worked pretty well together.

I think that with these foie gras burgers I came full-circle with this whole burger challenge. I started with those delicious James Beard burgers that I thought were the very essence of burger. I didn't know I'd blog the whole thing the way I had. Along the way, we departed from our predefined calendar and with the help of enterprising grill-partners, turned out some pretty wacky burgers. This evening's burgers were very much like those first ones I made, but dressed up some. The sirloin was as simple as those first, James Beard burgers were. The foie gras and the shiitake did not take away from the essential meat.

I don't think I can look at burgers the same way again-- certainly not after 31 days of minced meat (with some potatoes and tofu thrown in). But finally I can now cook something else for dinner.

Epilogue:
Yesterday, I went to the nearest In-n-Out Burger joint. My guests wanted to try them out as they didn't have In-n-Out in New York. So I obliged, despite saying that I wouldn't touch burgers again for the foreseeable future, having just done thirty-one days of them. I ordered what I used to order at In-n-Out: a cheeseburger animal style with fries well done. Back before my burger endeavor, I used to think that In-n-Outs were terrific burgers. But yesterday I was astonished at how mediocre they are. In-n-Out is just another fast food burger.

National Burger Month Day 30: A day for leftovers; A duo of decidedly non-kosher lamb burgers

2008-06-03T20:57:00.001-07:00

To those people (one or two at most, I am sure) who are even keeping up (out of sheer boredom I am sure) with my observance of National Burger Month, I apologize for being remiss in my blog updates. The parental units are visiting burger headquarters and all sort of work has gone into schlepping around town entertaining the guests. Through this all, I remained dedicated to the last two days of National Burger Month and I did really end with a bang. This post is a little catching up with the month update.

NBM Day 30 was supposed to be part of my trifecta of triumphant burgers for closing out the celebration (day 1 was my döner burger). I planned to make a Filipino Crispy Pata burger. Crispy Pata is a Filipino dish where they poach a pork shank for a while, and then deep fry it, hence adding the crispy to its name. I had elaborate plans for procuring a pork shank, boiling it, then chopping it up into bits before forming patties for the deep fryer. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a pork shank in time, and with the impending parental visit, had barely enough time to clean the house, and no time to make day two of my trifecta of triumphant burgers for closing out the celebration. All I had were leftovers.

Stupid me, I didn't label my minced meat. I didn't know if I was making a pork burger or a lamb burger, and my nose is not sensitive enough to tell apart one batch of uncooked meat from another. So to solve my identification problem, I just made the pork sleep with the lamb-- the perfect unkosher combination caught in a bout of interspecies melding. I topped the frankenburgers with more leftover stuff-- spinach, tomatoes and goat cheese. The results wasn't bad at all. I made a duo of frankenburgers, one in a traditional bun and the other in a pita.

National Burger Month Day 29: Döner Kebab Burger

2008-05-31T10:10:00.000-07:00

On Adalbertsr. 10, in Kreuzberg, Berlin is Hasir's Restaurant. According to my Döner Kebab trading cards, Hasir is "Das Geburtshaus der Dönertasche!" So the story goes that Hasir, a Turkish immigrant in Berlin invented the döner kebab in 1971. Everyone liked it, and now it's the most popular sandwich in Germany. They had similarly prepared meats in Turkey prior to 1970, for sure. Berlin, after all, does not have a monopoly on meat on a spit. And neither does Turkey. There are other versions of this preparation-- gyros, shawarmas, etc. But the particular sandwich as prepared by Mr. Hasir was a thing of beauty. I cannot put into words how wonderful a sandwich he made. I lie awake at night dreaming of eating one of these things again.

Anyway, I decided, for National Burger Month, to attempt to assemble my own döner kebab and turn it into a burger. The night was fraught with challenges. My largest obstacle was the reality of not owning an upright rotisserie grill. So making my kebabs on a regular bbq grill was a little bit of a compromise. I must get a "Set it and forget it" rotisserie oven for future döner kebab construction.

Stuff for döner:
1 lb lamb sirloin
1/2 lb ground lamb
1 large onion
salt and pepper

Stuff for harissa (sauce):
1 large tomato
2 tbsp crushed chili flakes
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp caraway seed
1 tbsp cumin
1 tsp salt

cute lil döners

The night before grilling, I took the lamb sirloin and sliced it up into 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch thick slices. I also tossed the onion in a food processor and pureed the living daylights out of it until I got onion juice. The lamb strips I marinated in the onion puree overnight and tossed in about 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper.

In the meantime, I made the harissa sauce. I just took everything in the stuff list and mixed it all up in a food processor. Instead of the fresh tomato, I used some canned plum tomato that was sitting in the fridge.

Finally-- the lamb was taken from its onion bath and mixed in with some ground lamb. I made two batches. One batch I threaded onto skewers (so that I could see if I was capable of making real döner kebabs) and another batch I chopped up into smaller bits and mixed with even more ground lamb to form into patties. These were then placed onto the grill. To replicate the rotisserie oven effect, I sat over the grill and hummed like a machine while I continuously turned the skewered meat around. And for the most part, we had some pretty cute looking miniature döners. John suggested that I take out a tiny knife when it cooks and slice little tiny döner strips. and put them into little tiny flat bread. But I digress. This humming and turning worked for about five minutes. And then we had an emergency. I had just put my burger on the grill and noticed that the grill no longer spewed fire. Tongues of orange flames no longer licked the bottoms of my hunks of meat. After 28 days of working overtime for my burgers, my grill ran out of propane gas.

Panic.

Dejected but undeterred, I awakened my oven and stove from their slumber and like worker ants, they reported to duty and did their tasks. I finished the burger and the kebabs in the oven, searing the burger first on a hot cast iron skillet before sticking it in the heat.

oh, my pretty burger

The burger I topped with a little harissa sauce and a little yogurt and sandwiched in between two pieces of mini pita bread-- a huge compromise for a döner since the döner pitas are thicker. Another big compromise was that my yogurt wasn't herby yogurt. I should've made a garlic yogurt sauce. In the end, though, this was an amazing, amazing burger. And the döner I will make again as a matter of principle. I must have my döners.

What an epic, earthshattering burger.

National Burger Month Day 28: Wimpy Burgers at the Red

2008-05-31T09:55:00.000-07:00

Becky came back to Santa Cruz for a week. It was so good to have her back, even if only for a week. On her final night, went to Santa Cruz's Red, the preeminent meet market in town for Orange and Marin County university students who want to pretend they are at a real big city lounge. Oh if only they knew...

The Red has great cocktails. On this night I started with a wonderful negroni in a frosted aluminum cup and ended with a rye whiskey manhattan. I also had some of their awesome, awesome sliders. The Red offers two main kinds of sliders-- the Wimpy Platter and the Lil Mac Platter. Both are really good sliders. The Lil Mac is their dressed up slider, comes with three little burgers, each with its own sauce. There's a bacon & gorgonzola burger; a pesto & swiss cheese burger; and a bbq smoked cheddar burger. I decided to go with the Wimpy Platter, which was a set of three sliders that are miniature replicas of their fullsized Bluto Burger. Wimpy is topped with onion marmalade and russian dressing.

The Red: Inebriate university students and wannabe dwellers from the OC and really good burgers.

National Burger Month Day 27: Garlicky Pork Burgers

2008-05-28T18:17:00.000-07:00

(fade in)

We're in a living room. A bespectacled guy is shimmying around with a steering wheel in his hands. The television is on, and Super Mario Kart is whirring in the Wii. We hear a squeaky little voice.

Pork: Hey!
Me: Wha? Oh you. Hi, Pork.
Pork: So...
Me: Um.
Pork: So, you've been ignoring me.
Me: Ignore? You? I just had pork. Last week.
Pork: That's a week too long.
Me: As I recall I extolled your wonders.
Pork: Yes, but that was barbecue. You drowned me in sauce.
Me: And?
Pork: And you might as well have marinated me in soy sauce and called me bulgogi.
Me: But that's beef.
Pork: Never mind. You didn't allow my natural flavors to shine without drenching me in brown stuff.
Me: It was a little red... But anyway, your point?
Pork: I deserve to be in the spotlight. Really in the spotlight.
Me: How do you propose we do that?
Pork: There's this fellow from New York. He's written a few books. I think his name is Bittman. Mark. He says just a little bit of minced garlic and a little bit of fennel seed would make me even more hip. None of that country bumpkin barbecue sauce stuff.
Me: Bittman huh?
Pork: Yes.
Me: How again?
Pork: You take about half a pound of succulent little ground me, mix in about a teaspoon of minced garlic, and then mix in about a teaspoon of fennel seed. Then just grill me over medium-high heat for about five minutes per side. Really easy. I like the tropics, you know.
Me: That sounds delicious.

(five minutes pass)

Pork: (exasperated) Well?
Me: Huh? Oh sure. Yeah. I'm such a pushover. (under my breath: Jeez!)

Only the sound of the television this time, and Super Mario Kart is whirring in the Wii.

(fade to black)

Chihuahua on Cheeseburgers

2008-05-27T14:43:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by albino_octopus

This has been blogged about elsewhere, but I must do so as well, if only to kick off the FINAL FIVE DAYS of National Burger Month.

I present Chihuahua on Cheeseburgers, by William Hundley. It is part of a collection of photos of stuff with cheeseburgers. Brilliant!

National Burger Month Day 26: Spicy Potato Burger

2008-05-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

I had some vegetarians over so that stunt I pulled with soaking tofu in beef fat wouldn't fly with my non-carnivorous friends.

This was a simple Indian-inspired potato burger, based on a recipe for potato patties in The Joy of Cooking. My adjustments included more fragrant spices, as their burger was pretty bland. I don't understand why they would call theirs samosas when their samosas were definitely lacking in the Indian spices department.

Stuff for six potato burgers:
2 baking potatoes, peeled and boiled
1 onion chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup peas (if they're not frozen, make sure they're boiled nicely already)
1 tbsp mustard seed
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
1 tbsp garam masala
1 tbsp coriander
salt and pepper

Boil the potatoes for about 10-15 minutes. When they are tender enough, mash them up. While the potatoes are boiling, toast the mustard seeds on the olive oil until they start a-poppin. Before you lose all your mustard seeds from their flying about, toss in the garlic and the onions. Cook for about 5 minutes, or until the onions are soft and translucent. These can then be mixed into the mashed potato. Same goes for the cilantro and the green peas. Toss in the coriander and garam masala, and flavor with salt and pepper. Finally, form into patties. These are actually ready to eat now, but I actually grilled them for a little bit to give them shape and body.

That's it.

Lychees and Almond Cream in Puff Pastry with Raspberry and Lime Syrups

2008-05-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

This is my entry to The Leftover Queen's Royal Food Joust. Other entries can be found at the forums. This is my first entry into a food blog event. Anxious to make something other than hamburgers I was excited to do something different from what I've been cooking all month. It was fun to make em.

There are a couple of components. Here's the stuff:
1 can lychees in juice, drained (we're really just going to use 9-12 lychees in this recipe)
1 sheet puff pastry
1 egg, beaten

Stuff for the raspberry syrup:
1/4 cup fresh raspberries
1/4 cup frozen mixed berries
1/4 cup plus 3 tbsp water
3 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch

Stuff for lime syrup:
1/2 cup lime juice
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup plus 3 tbsp water
1 tbsp cornstarch

Stuff for almond cream:
1 cup roasted almonds
1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup sugar
5 tbsp corn syrup
1/2 to 1 cup milk
1/2 tsp almond extract

To do:
First do the almond cream. Except for the milk, put all the ingredients for the almond cream in a food processor. Let it run for a minute or so. Once you have a paste-like mixture-- it's actually now a marzipan -- you can start drizzling in the milk to lighten the consistency, while still processing. The final mixture should be creamy and smooth, yet still thick (I would say, about as thick as mascarpone cheese). Set aside.

Now, work on the syrups. For each of the syrup, mix 3 tbsp water with 1 tbsp cornstarch in a small bowl. For the raspberry, place the fresh and frozen berries, 1/4 cup water and sugar in a small saucepan, over medium heat. Once it begins to boil, stir in the cornstarch mixture until the sauce is no longer runny. Do the same for the lime, beginning with the lime juice, 1/4 cup water and sugar. Once that boils, stir in the cornstarch mixture so that the sauce thickens. Run the raspberry sauce through a sieve to separate the seeds and other solids.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Now that the key components are finished, pour the almond cream mixture into a pastry bag and fill each individual lychee with the cream. The puff pastry sheet should be cut into 3 inch by 3 inch squares. Place one lychee in each pastry sheet square, folding opposite corners together to make little dumplings. Arrange dumplings on a baking pan lined with parchment paper. Before the pan is placed in the oven, brush each dumpling with the beaten egg and poke each dumpling to make little vent holes.

Bake for about 15 minutes or until puff pastry is golden brown. To plate, drizzle with syrups. I like to keep the syrup on the plate so the diner can control the tartness of the lime and the sweetness of the raspberry.

Here they are! This recipe makes about 9 stuffed lychee pastries.

That's it! Total prep and cook time was about 1 hour.

National Burger Month Day 25: Reproducing a Spicy Beef Kabob in a Chicken Burger

2008-05-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

I use this marinade often for whenever I want to do kabobs on the grill. It works really well with chunks of sirloin over a charcoal fire. It also works very well in a chicken burger.

I guess this is a middle eastern inspired marinade. The burger itself is made from boneless, skinless chicken thigh, which I pulsed in a food processor a few times to get to the right level of chunkiness.

Marinade stuff:
5 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tsp sweet paprika
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Mix the ingredients together and marinate the chicken bits for at least one hour. Once marinated, you will need a tablespoon or so of corn flour to mix into the drained and patted chicken so that you can properly form the meat into round patties. It's important to get enough corn flour in there for the chicken to keep its shape or it will fall apart.

My first mistake was trying the patties on the grill first. It was a definite disaster as bits of chicken pattie fell into the flames. I quickly shifted gears and transfered what was left onto a hot griddle, where the chicken patties cooked for about 6 minutes per side. Burgers were topped with spinach, some sliced red bell peppers and garlic and herb goat cheese, and were terrific.

Chocolate Covered Bacon?!

2008-05-25T14:15:00.001-07:00

Chocolate is my favorite food. Bacon is my second favorite food. Marini's, a candy institution in Santa Cruz, California, makes chocolate covered bacon. I've lived here in this little provincial backwater for several years already and I only discovered Marini's chocolate covered bacon last Friday when a coworker asked me if I liked bacon. Are you kidding me? Of course I like bacon-- shouldn't even be questioned. He told me that Marini's had chocolate covered bacon. Thinking of this in the abstract, I wondered why there were no riots stampeding towards Marini's for these suckas. I left work early just so I could walk across the street and buy a few strips.

Admittedly, chocolate covered bacon is a novelty candy-- like tequila lollipops with worm inside. It's probably just there at Marini's, targeted to touristy crowds who want proof that the town of Santa Cruz is pretty wacky. The candy is not really mindblowing. I was expecting my entire world to implode after eating bacon and chocolate together. Marini's milk chocolate is not my favorite, and the bacon they used was not really too tasty. If it had more salty-smoky bacony flavor, perhaps the bacon would be prominent enough to offset the sweetness of the Marini's milk chocolate. It also was devoid of the wonderful bacony crunch. In the end, I issue a standard "meh." I'll stick to the deep-fried Twinkies.

National Burger Month Day 24: Chili Cheeseburger

2008-05-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

Andrea is gone, but National Burger Month must go on!

Usually, chili cheeseburgers are these messy things. You can order them at fast food restaurants and they usually just give you their regular hamburgers with gooey chili dripping on top. I wanted to make one too, but instead of just my regular burgers with chili on top, I wanted the chili to permeate the very beings of these burgers.

I made the chili first. This was a quick and generic chili so it's probably not going to be a backyard classic anytime. It's a start though, so maybe I'll work with it more in the future to really make it jump.

Stuff:
1/4 cup chili powder
1/4 cup chipotle chili powder
1/4 pound of ground chuck (optional)
some olive oil
1 onion, chopped
5 cloves of garlic, minced
3 jalapeño peppers, seeded and minced
1 can of black beans
1 cup of canned whole plum tomatoes with juice (about 16 oz.)
some red wine vinegar
3 cups water
some lime juice
salt and pepper

Toasted the chili powders first on a cast iron skillet. Put the stuff aside. I made two batches of chili-- one for vegetarians and one for carnivores. In the carnivore batch I sauteed the ground chuck until brown then put it aside. Sauteed the onion, garlic and jalapeños in olive oil until they were soft-- about 8 minutes. Tossed in the toasted chili powders, the canned tomatoes, beans, the vinegar and the water. I also did this on the meat side. After all of this stuff was in the pan, I just let it simmer for about half an hour, seasoning with salt, pepper and lime juice I saw fit.

After the liquid reduced enough for me to recognize it as chili, I pulled some of the vegetarian chili out and soaked my hamburger patties in it for about 30 more minutes. And this I proceeded to grill when all was done.

Burgers were topped with even more chili (the con carne went on my burger), some shredded cheddar, sour cream, and most importantly, Frito corn chips. My chili needs work. It was hot, but unrefined. I mean it was delicious, but I feel like I got punched in the mouth. The burgers themselves were great, but the chili recipe needs to be polished some to inject it with the nuances of a good chili. I must consult my Texan contacts. I guess it's a start, but I'll have to revisit this sometime.

National Burger Month Day 23: Leftovers and Rosemary

2008-05-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

I had some leftovers from the beach bonfire. It was a pretty busy day but I still managed to zip home for lunch to whip something up quickly.

I took a sprig of rosemary and speared it into a burger patty from the previous night. I usually do this for lamb shoulder, this whole spearing things with rosemary (the lamb also has whole cloves of garlic stuck into it). The lamb is pretty good with goat cheese on top so I figured the goat cheese would go wonderfully with the leftovers and rosemary burger. For good measure, I also tossed on some leftover pancetta. Quick lunch, good lunch.

Burger and a burned bun.

National Burger Month Day 22: Burgers at a Beach Bonfire

2008-05-23T10:05:00.000-07:00

Andrea is leaving National Burger Month Headquarters in two days to leave us for less-burgerful climes in Switzerland. We're trying to pack in as many Santa Cruz things for her to do, which invariably meant that a beach bonfire needed to happen. Burgers like bonfires too so we took them along. They had a blast.

Santa Cruz at dusk

Our humble fire. The hippies in the next fire pit were kicked off the beach by the beach patrol. They had a much larger fire that spilled out of the pit and onto the sand. I don't know if they were kicked off for the fire or for their hippieness and their celebration of the earth vibrations.

Our burgers tonight were straightforward, traditional burgers: just some chuck with garlic salt and pepper, a little melted provolone and seared pancetta on top. Very nice.

A wayward chicken-basil sausage was lost to the coals because Andrea was overzealous in protecting her burgers.

Happy customers, everyone, including the guy who only ate chicken-basil sausages.

National Burger Month Day 21: Hoisin Beef and Broccoli Burger

2008-05-22T09:38:00.001-07:00

I wanted to try doing the rice buns again so I figured another Asian-inspired burger was in the works. We've done Japanese and Korean inspired burgers before. This time we tried Chinese. Sort of. The rice buns were done onigiri yaki style-- I figured that after our sticky experience the last time we used rice, we had better toast the rice this time. I'll give detailed ingredients this time, but will only describe the onigiri yaki process. The rest should be quick and easy.

Stuff for burger:
1/2 lb ground chuck
1/4 cup scallions, chopped
Salt and pepper

Stuff for marinade:
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tbsp dry sherry (Chinese rice wine preferred)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp corn starch
1 tsp canola oil
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
1/2 tsp ginger, grated

Stuff for broccoli:
1 head of broccoli, florets sliced
3 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp corn starch
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup scallions, chopped
1 tbsp sherry
Some oil for stir frying

Stuff for onigiri yaki:
2 cups short grain rice, steamed
4 tsp soy sauce
2 tsp sake
some canola oil

How-to:
Salt and pepper the ground chuck. Mix into the meat the scallions. This should make about two burgers. In a bowl, mix the marinade ingredients. Marinate the burgers for about 1 hour. While the burgers are marinating, you can prepare your onigiri yaki.

Mix the soy and the sake. Form patties out of the rice. Brush one side lightly with oil and lay it on a preheated heavy skillet (medium temperature). While the oiled side browns, brush some oil on the exposed side of the rice. Then brush some of the soy sauce mixture on top of the rice buns. Once the bottom turns slightly golden, flip the rice buns. Brush some more soy sauce on the now golden top of the rice buns. The bottom should now caramelize. When this happens, flip the burger one more time and wait for that side to caramelize too. And once that side turns brown, you have an onigiri yaki.

As the stir frying takes less than a minute, you can actually start grilling the burgers on medium-high heat for about 4-5 minutes per side. While that goes on, you can stir fry the broccoli. But first, mix the corn starch, sherry and soy sauce. My stir fry tips: The pan should already be very hot-- a lot of Chinese stir frying is really fast. It's all about the high temperature cooking for like a minute. Just toss the broccoli, stir stir stir (with the sauce too), then you're done.

The burgers were pretty good. If I were to do this again, I'd marinate these suckas for a little longer. The onigiri yaki buns were delicious by themselves and I was tempted to just eat them without the burgers. They went well with the broc and burger. Unlike bread though, the rice was pretty damn heavy. The perfectly cooked rice buns hold together fine. But if you dry them out too much (perhaps a result of too hot a pan), they crumble very easily. Good burger. A variation could perhaps be made with black bean sauce instead of hoisin.

National Burger Month Day 20: Hamburgegger

2008-05-21T00:57:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, I used to hang out at my friend Jordi's house in New Brunswick, NJ. In the summers, I would ride my bike over there, we'd watch a bunch of indie movies, and then Jordi would pull out the ShopRite frozen hamburger patties and fix us all some hamburgeggers. I don't remember if they had french fries... those belonged in the Fat Cat sandwiches they sell at the Rutgers University grease trucks, which consisted of two cheeseburgers, lettuce, tomatoes and fries in a roll. But those two things-- the hamburgegger and those fat sandwiches (I personally didn't order the Fat Cat often. My choice was the Fat Elvis, which was gyro, french fries, mozzarella sticks, lettuce, tomatoes, white sauce and hot sauce in a roll)--will forever be imprinted in my head.

So earlier today, my sister reminded me that it's not only National Burger Month, it's also National Egg Month. To celebrate, we synthesized both events. And I pay tribute to the hamburgegger and those fat sandwiches.

National Burger Month Day 19: Barbecue Pork Burger with Cornbread

2008-05-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

Trader Joe's saves the day. We had a burger emergency last night. I was planning to make corn bread from scratch but as I took my baking goods out of the cupboards last night, I discovered that my all-purpose flour and my cornmeal were infested by mealworms! (shock and dismay!) We bake somewhat frequently in the house, so how the mealworms got in there, I don't know. Admittedly, the cornmeal and the all-purpose flour were the only bags of grain in the cupboard not in a glass jar or not in a giant ziploc bag. We ended up trashing most of the contents in our baking cupboard out of gross-out-by-association paranoia and I have resolved to purchase more glass canisters with which to store flour, cornmeal, etc. Unfortunately, this meant that my cornbread plans had to change. I hopped in my car and made a beeline for Trader Joe's. They didn't have cornmeal so my first concession to ready-to-cook boxed mixes happened tonight. TJ's makes a cornbread mix, and it was pretty good. And the baking time was just enough for us to make the rest of the dinner.

BBQ Pork Burger Bunned in Cornbread

I started with a BBQ sauce that was inspired by Elise Bauer's Pulled Pork Sandwich recipe. My plan called for a similar sauce for marinating ground pork.

In rough amounts, for 3 burgers:
1/2 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 chipotle pepper (canned), minced
2 tsp chipotle chili powder
2 tsp tomato paste
1 tsp mustard
2/3 cup white vinegar
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 bay leaf
1 tsp worcestershire sauce
salt
pepper

The burgers themselves are made from ground pork (about 3/4 pounds), with salt and pepper tossed in. After forming them into patties, rub them with the barbecue sauce (and if you want to set some aside to pour onto the burgers after they grill, do so before you rub and marinate). Leave the burgers marinating in the sauce for about 30-45 minutes. We grilled the burgers on a medium-hot grill for about 4 1/2 minutes per side.

The resulting burgers were tasty. Since ground pork isn't as lean as beef, these things were juicier. The barbecue sauce was terrific. The cornbread, while not made from scratch, was also a perfect pairing (of course it would be, this was bbq pork). I loved it and I would have eaten more had I not stuffed myself before dinner with my new addiction, Dark Chocolate Covered Joe-Joes cookies from Trader Joe's. John respectfully abstained from the pork because he is training to be an ascetic.

Said Andrea to her burger, "So sweet, so spicy, so porky."

National Burger Month Day 18: Andrea's Happyoca Strhubarb Breakfast Burger

2008-05-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

Several days ago, we were brainstorming about how to bring National Burger Month to breakfast. Plenty of suggestions flew-- sausage, waffles, sweet, savory, whatever. On Sunday, we had a bunch of folks over and this is what we served.

This is Andrea's Happyoca Strhubarb Breakfast Burger. That's a name-by-committee-name, with plenty of input from the breakfasters. In short, it is a "burger" of tapioca pudding with strawberry and rhubarb, topped by kiwi and more strawberry, with a "mayo" of maple syrup-infused whipped mascarpone and cream, bunned in french toast.

Everything was cobbled together on the fly, so we have no detailed ingredients list. But here's a vague rundown. A few ribs of rhubarb were chopped and boiled until soft with a bit of sugar. These are set aside while the tapioca is prepared in a saucepan-- we used both the pearls and the starch to ensure the clumpiness of the "pattie." The tapioca was further enhanced by fresh vanilla bean and cardamom. The set aside rhubarb and some chopped strawberries were then mixed into the pudding, then poured into pattie-molds and refrigerated to set.

While this happyoca business was happening, the french toast was also getting busy. I can give more detailed instructions this time as the french toast action happens at our house fairly frequently. We always start with cinnamon swirl bread.

For 12 pieces of french toast:
8 eggs
1 1/3 cup heavy cream
4 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp vanilla extract
a pinch or two or three of salt

Soak the bread, then fry on a buttered griddle.

Finally, the whipped cream with mascarpone and maple. We just whipped some heavy cream, stirred in a little bit of mascarpone, but not too much as we wanted to keep the stuff fluffy. And then we drizzled about a teaspoon or so of maple syrup. That's it.

As anyone might imagine, the breakfast was delicious. It all came together wonderfully.

And if people don't count this as a real burger, we went out to the Saturn Cafe in the evening and had burgers in quirky Santa Cruz style. So we had an insurance burger for dinner if this breakfast one was too loose a play on burger.

National Burger Month Day 17: Classic Lamb Burger

2008-05-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

Saturday night was leftover night. After 16 days of burgers, I had to clear some of my pantry. I guess I could've done more with the burger, but I was hungry and couldn't spend much time thinking of dressing this up more. I had lamb in the fridge, and so inspired by a roast leg of lamb I used to do, I just did the burger in that style. Very simple.

I took minced garlic (lots), garlic salt, pepper, dried rosemary and a few drips of red wine, and rubbed the burger in it. That's it. It was simple and tasty.

And then I turned on the TV (car's broken, I'm gimpy, can't get out of the house), and found that the Food Network had one of their boring Food Network Challenges shows on. Why is everything on the Food Network just about challenges these days? I miss real cooking shows. Anyway, this time they weren't doing just any old challenge. They were doing the Build-a-Better-Burger Challenge. And as if I hadn't gotten enough burger for the month, I just sat there, a rapt viewer of burgers.

National Burger Month Day 16: Salmon Burger with Hollandaise

2008-05-17T01:58:00.000-07:00

I almost had a panic attack tonight due to some unforeseen circumstances that could've kept me from having my burger for the day. Some people know of my current state of gimpiness, hobbling around on crutches. What a bummer too--yesterday was Bike-to-Work Day in most of the SF Bay Area and I wasn't able to bike-to-work because of my gimpiness. Well, today, before I had a chance to do my shopping, my car broke down, leaving me with the scary prospect of not being able to celebrate National Burger Month because of my present immobility. Luckily for me, housemate Andrea decided to bike to the market to get us tonight's ingredients.

So we made salmon burgers. Andrea actually bought salmon steaks, which were fine. Except removing the bones took a little bit of work and I spent the evening with salmon smelling fingertips. So while I was busy pulling pinbones out, Andrea was making the hollandaise sauce. Mmm hollandaise sauce.

The burgers:
1/2 pound of salmon, preferably fillets, cut into cubes
1/4 cup scallions, chopped finely
1 egg
3 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp panko breadcrumbs
1 tbsp parsley, chopped finely
salt and pepper to taste
bunch-o-chives

hollandaise sauce (sorry no recipe-- Andrea is super secretive about this, but I'm sure you can find hollandaise using that wonderful foodie search tool you can find in the sidebar on the right)

Stuff the salmon into a food processor and pulse a couple of times until you have a pink mass, but not a mushy pink mass. You need to see smaller chunks of salmon but not salmon puree. Then mix all the rest of the ingredients in there. Form into patties. Grill the salmon burgers for about 2-3 minutes per side or until brown on each side. We topped with bits of chives.

The result was a delicious burger. Hollandaise and salmon, of course, go together like ice cream and my tummy (or coffee and my head) and this did not disappoint. The butteriness of the hollandaise went very well with the slightly citrusy, slightly oniony burgers. My cat, Winifred, watched us plaintively from a few feet away. But Winifred, we were thinking of you. Onions and cats do not go together safely, unlike delicious hollandaise and salmon.

National Burger Month Day 15: Surf and Turf Burger

2008-05-16T00:42:00.000-07:00

I wanted to do something with shrimp without actually making a shrimp burger so I figured making a little surf and turf in a sandwich would be interesting. I remember doing a surf and turf with scallops in a red wine reduction once, and we considered topping the burgers with something similar, but ultimately we turned to one of my favorite tapas.

A couple of weeks ago, a few of us went to a wonderful little place in San Francisco called Esperpento. We ordered some of their gambas al ajillo. While gambas are pretty standard fare as far as tapas go, the ones we ordered then were really good. So tonight I tried to pull off my own version of gambas and found that they were really easy to make.

Gambas al Ajillo:
1/2 lb medium prawns, shelled and cleaned
3 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp parsley, chopped
1 tbsp chili pepper flakes
smoked paprika to taste
salt to taste

Heat the oil on medium in a skillet. Once the pan is warm, but not too hot, toss the garlic and pepper flakes into the pan and stir fry, being careful not to burn the garlic. Once the pan is hot, throw the shrimp into the mix, followed by the paprika. I used about 1 1/2 tbsp paprika. Once the shrimps begin to turn pink, after about a minute or two, toss in the parsley. Shrimp gets really stringy and dry when overcooked, so remove the pan from the heat once the shrimp turn pink, but not entirely opaque.

The burger is the standard chuck, pepper and salt affair that we've turned to on many an evening during National Burger Month. Once the burgers are grilled to the desired doneness and are bunned, simply lay a few shrimp over the burgers.

We found that equal proportions shrimp to burger worked the best. Too little shrimp and the burger gets too burgery; we lose the shrimpiness. Too much shrimp and we forget we're celebrating burger month. And now, we'd like to call Shrimp to the podium.

Shrimp: Ahem. The winner of the Best Supporting Ingredient Award for this evening goes to Garlic! Garlic, come on up here and claim you award!
Garlic: Woooooo! Woooohooo!! I can't believe this! (sigh) I'd like to thank pepper for her support. But really, Olive Oil, I couldn't have done it without you. Olive Oil, this is for you. I had a great time working with you! And Shrimp, thank you too for giving me this chance to shine.
Shrimp: No really, you were there for me. You were there for me.
Garlic: They love me! They really, really love me!

Thank you Shrimp. Thank you Garlic. You guys were great.

Welcome Foodie BlogRollers!

2008-05-15T11:26:00.000-07:00

I've had a lot of fun clicking around the Foodie BlogRoll and have been losing a lot of work hours just sneaking peeks all over (making sure to hide the Firefox window underneath Excel sheets full of numbers), adding to my kitchen todo lists. So I'm glad to be a part of it.

A note on the burgers:
I don't hope to do just burgers here. It's just that it's National Burger Month and I felt I HAD to celebrate it. I have an irrational love of all things burger. See my halloween costume last year and my iPod case, which I made by myself. Two weeks straight of burgers is a lot of fun, and I have two more weeks of burgers in my head but I can't wait to step out of the burger fold after this month ("thank you" says my workout trainer).

Hooray for burgers!

National Burger Month Day 14: The Jucy Lucy

2008-05-15T10:41:00.000-07:00

I can't believe we did 14 days of burgers, straight. They've not all been the classic American hamburger (teriyaki chicken burgers with rice buns?!) so to celebrate the 2 week mark of our National Burger Month observance, we went back to all-American... including the cheese.

Jucy Lucy, Juicy Loosey, J-Luce... I don't know what the original spelling was or who came up with it first. Apparently, this is a burger that calls Minneapolis its home. A recipe for this burger can be found over at A Hamburger Today so I won't reproduce it here. I should one day take a trip to Minneapolis and see what all the hub-bub is about in person.

The Jucy Lucy was a wonder to behold. As mentioned by others who cite the fluid viscosity of the cheese that fills these burgers, only American cheese singles can work. Cheddar would turn into oily chunks but American cheese becomes a beautiful velvety syrup as it steams and bubbles in its envelope of grassfed organic beef. And this brings us to the other important components in the Jucy Lucy. We used the standard chuck but added in some worcestershire sauce and garlic salt, which gave the burgers even more character. If it were gooeyness alone that made a burger and we didn't have the worcester and the garlic salt, this would be a fine burger. But flavor separates the great burgers from the fine burgers. Left to its own flavorful merits, American cheese is sorely lacking, so three cheers for worcester and garlic salt! The goo made the mess and brought the fun. The worcester and garlic sauce pushed us over the top.

National Burger Month Day 13: Inside-Out Lamb Cheeseburger

2008-05-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

After the huge productions that the last few burgers became, tonight's burger was an almost effortless project. At least in appearance, it was the most traditional-looking burger I've had in a while. I made an inside-out lamb cheeseburger, mostly inspired by the Bittman article in the New York Times. This is also a variation of the burger we did on Day 8.

Burger:
1/3 pounds of ground lamb
1 tsp dried mint flakes
a slice or two of smoked mozzarella
salt
pepper

I seasoned the ground lamb with salt, pepper and mint flakes, then formed two patties. Next, I took the two patties and sandwiched the cheese between them, pressing everything together into a mega-pattie of wonder. This was then grilled to my desired doneness, which in this case, was a nice medium-- enough for the cheese to melt, while keeping the moist juiciness of the cute lamb. Baaaa. I think it took all of five minutes to prep and less than ten minutes to cook.

Good burger. Simple burger--one of my favorite burgers, and one that I turn to at least a couple of times a barbecue-season.

National Burger Month Day 12: Undermining the Tofu Burger

2008-05-13T00:49:00.001-07:00

Tonight's burger was the most challenging burger we've made yet. After yesterday's bulgogi burger, I felt the need to leave the beef alone for a little bit. I suggested to the team that perhaps we could try our hand at tofu. But I also think all of us kind of realized how boring a prospect tofu in a burger would be. Personally, I've never met a tofu burger that I truly liked. Even in my days as a closeted carnivorous vegetarian (back when I hid from my friends the fact that I occasionally ate burgers and that I wasn't at all ovo-lacto) I never had a good tofu burger. I think it was Andrea who suggested we put bacon on our tofu burgers. Haha, funny, we thought. But then I remembered that Top Chef recently had an episode about tofu soaked in rendered beef fat. And the chefs who came up with that stuff won that challenge. So we decided that the only tofu burgers that we could possibly do for National Burger Month needed to soak in rendered beef fat, be fried on bacon grease, and be topped by strips of bacon.

And so was born the tofu burger, marinated in rendered beef fat, topped with a thai green curry, soy fried snow peas, and crisp bacon. It was inspired by and adapted from the Top Chef recipe by Dale and Richard.

The burger:
20 oz super-firm tofu, cut into 1 inch chunks
1.5 cups beef fat, rendered
2 tbsp scallions, chopped
1 tbsp ginger, minced
1 tbsp cilantro
2 tbsp green curry sauce
1 tbsp chipotle pepper, minced
5 tbsp canola oil
2 tsp sesame oil
1 egg
1 cup panko bread crumbs
salt and pepper to taste

The crust:
2 tbsp coriander
1/2 cup sliced almonds

I rendered the beef fat first. I didn't do the labor intensive boil-the-fat-and-reboil-and-reboil method for rendering. I just simmered it in a pan until I got a bunch of greasy oil. I coated the tofu chunks in this oil and let them be for about half an hour, as I prepped everything else.

Threw the tofu, egg, chipotle pepper, ginger, scallion, cilantro, canola and sesame oils in a food processor and pulsed until the mixture was a smooth slurry. After this, the breadcrumbs were mixed in with the tofu.

Formed the tofu into patties, which were then dragged in a bowl full of the crust mixture. They were then ready to fry. But before this happened, we had to do the bacon, which we fried on a griddle, making sure to leave enough bacon grease to fry the burgers in.

As a side dish, I prepared some snow peas, which I stir fried briefly with some garlic and soy sauce.

Burgers were fried for about 4 minutes per side and laid onto toasted english muffins. Once ready, we spooned some green curry sauce (store bought) onto the burgers and then topped them with a piece of bacon and a pod of snow peas.

Not a beef burger.

The burgers were actually pretty good, though I wouldn't call them a homerun. I wanted more. I wanted the beef to show through the tofu. I wanted to take a bite and realize that this was tofu the way it was meant to be: full of flavor and full of depth. Looking back, I think I should've pulverize the tofu more before marinating it. But really, the burgers were extremely tasty. The green curry was delicious and the coriander lent the burgers a sweet, smoky taste. The snow peas were fragrant and crispy. The real star, and the key ingredient, was the bacon. It went so well with the curry sauce and the curry infused in the burger.

Overall, I think this was a good effort, but not a spectacular burger for National Burger Month. I wanted to be able to say "I can't believe this is tofu." If that were my only goal, then we only had middling results. But my real goal was to undermine the idea of tofu burger. And I think we succeeded in doing this. Go team.

I realized that I would've been much happier as a vegetarian a few years ago if I ate more bacon.

National Burger Month Day 11: Bulgogi Burger with Kimchi

2008-05-11T20:51:00.000-07:00

Kind of exhausted from Andrea's party, the creative part of my brain wasn't really operating at full-strength. We had tons of food leftover, and yet we still had to come up with something for National Burger Month. I was half-tempted to rehash the previous night's burger, which really wasn't a bad idea. I loved those jamaican jerk burgers. But then two things happened. I remembered that really delicious kalbi that Wink had brought to the party, and Sarah left a comment on my Facebook wall saying that I should make a kimchi burger sometime. And everything came together.

I marinated the burger patties (ground chuck, seasoned with salt and pepper) for about half an hour in a bulgogi marinade, then grilled the burgers. They were served on top of a piece of red leaf lettuce, and topped by a generous heap of the pickle of the gods, kimchi.

2 tbsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp canola oil
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp sesame seeds
2 garlic cloves, finely minced
2 scallions, finely chopped

These burgers were so good! Andrea was skeptical of the kimchi at first but it was perfect on the bulgogi marinated burger. Of course, Koreans have been eating kimchi and bulgogi for ages so there's no reason why this wouldn't have been delicious. Add one more burger to the to-repeat list.

National Burger Month Day 10: Jamaican Jerk Burgers with Orange-Chipotle Mayonnaise

2008-05-11T13:20:00.002-07:00

We had a two-weeks-before-going-away-party last night for Andrea and hoped to get lots of grill action in. Of course, burgers were part of the plan--we've sort of cultivated a reputation for burgering in these parts by now so for sure we couldn't disappoint our guests.

Day 10 on my official National Burger Month calendar lists the Jamaican Jerk Burger from Epicurious. While we haven't been good with keeping the calendar, today was special enough a day to dictate a fancy-pants burger. And really, a burger in a jamaican jerk wet rub sounded just too tantalizing to pass over.

Two Jamaican jerk beef patties and a Jamaican jerk chicken patty for John, who remains involved in his anti-beef burger campaign.

The recipe was easy enough to follow. There was a marinade of soy sauce, oil, scallions, thyme, garlic, and jalapeño peppers. If this were a real Jamaican jerk sauce, I would've used scotch bonnet peppers instead of the jalapeños. But after my last experience with habaneros (close cousin to the scotch bonnets) which involved burning fingers and lips for five days, I decided to go the wimpy route.

The other important component of this burger was the mayonnaise. I used store-bought mayo (no time to make homemade mayo this time, what with the party to prepare for), infused with a couple tablespoons of orange juice and a tablespoon or so of chopped chipotle peppers.

The burgers were marinated in the sauce for about 20 minutes before they were grilled. Buns were coated with the chipotle mayo. Finally, the burgers were topped with some greens and a tomato.

The party was fun. There were a bunch of Aikido people, a bunch of Psychology people, and a few no good troublemakers (my friends). There was meat piled on meat, piled on more meat, and a few vegetables on the side for the lone vegetarians who wished to celebrate National Burger Month anyway (well they celebrated Andrea, really). Highlights included grilled elk, barbecued spare ribs, Korean shortribs (kalbi), lots of mystery mixed drinks, and of course the burgers pictured above.

The burgers were highly satisfying. I'm glad I went jalapeño rather than scotch bonnet because the sauce was spicy without killing our taste buds. The mayo was smoky and sweet. Marinating the burgers in that sauce for 20 minutes kept them extremely tasty and tremendously juicy, which means that we now need to go to the store and buy more napkins.

National Burger Month Day 9: Tombo Tuna Burger with Ginger Wasabi Mayonnaise

2008-05-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

It was fortuitous that I called Andrea when I did because I was stuck at work, on crutches, with no ride home, and she was about to do the grocery shopping for tonight's installment of National Burger Month with John.

We already knew that fish was coming. About a week and half into burger month, we were already starting to moo at passing cars. Our original idea was an ahi tartare burger (grilled, to give it burger cred). Ahi tartare is a dish that seems to have become a throwaway standard at any San Francisco restaurant that describes itself as hip and fashionable-- 10 years ago. Any chef nowadays can pull an ahi tartare off as well as I can put cornflakes in a bowl in the morning. Ahi tartare, as overexposed as it is on restaurant menus even in backwater places like Santa Cruz, California, or even Edison, New Jersey (culinary capital of Edison, New Jersey), is sometimes just right. Ahi tartare has become comfort food.

So we did some research and decided to do an Asian inspired burger. We are in California after all. The sashimi quality ahi was twice the price of tombo (a.k.a., albacore) and since we were grilling these suckas, we just went for the tombo.

The burgers:
1 pound tuna cut in chunks and thrown into the food processor, then pulsed until burgery
1 tsp scallion chopped
1 tsp ginger ground
2 tsp soy sauce
a little pepper

The wasabi mayonnaise:
2 egg yolks
1/2 lime squeezed
1 tsp mustard (regular brown)
1 1/2 tsp ginger
1 1/2 tsp wasabi powder
1/2 tsp soy sauce
1-2 tsp sesame oil

To top:
avocado, sliced
black and white sesame seeds

We made two batches. One naked, and another dressed in sesame seeds. I prefer the sesame encrusted version. The burgers were seared on a griddle for about 40-45 seconds per side.

The burgers were delicious. The wasabi mayo was perfect-- not too strong, a little sweet, but still had a kick. Overall, the package was satisfying. Were I to do this again, I would add some more soy sauce and perhaps a little lime juice to the burger as the tuna just sucked up everything I mixed in there.

National Burger Month Day 8: Inside-out Cheeseburgers with Port and Onions

2008-05-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

The inside-out cheeseburger with port and onions was born out of a desperation to get something done, knowing that a bunch of people were about to come running into the house expecting burgers. For some of them, this would be their first day of participating in National Burger Month observances, so we had to come up with something special, and fast.

We wanted to make tonight the tuna tartare night, but unfortunately, time kept us from going ahead with that plan. After conducting a quick inventory of what was in our fridge, we realized we still had some chuck left in there. I've done inside-out cheeseburgers in the past (see Mark Bittman's story on burgers in the NYTimes... registration required), and we had some muenster cheese, so this would be a quick solution. I also figured we could maybe mix in some port in the burger to give it a little more body. Crippled as I was, with an ailing right foot and gimping around on crutches, Andrea took over the kitchen and mixed some port with the chuck. I just spectated from my perch on the couch.

We also decided that we could meld in some of the onion-burger technique (which I will really carry out once I am able to free myself from the bonds of crutches sometime this month). So we sauteed some sweet onions with the burgers. Little chunks of muenster cheese were inserted inside the patties and since they were muenster, they would surely melt into a nice creamy goo and keep the insides moist.

Overall, the burgers were tasty. The port infusion was discernible but not overpowering, and went well with the sweet onions and the cheese. Since the cheese took up space in the middle, the burgers actually cooked more quickly than usual so they ended up drier. The next time I make an inside-out cheeseburger, I think I need to reduce the cooking time to make up for the reduced density of meat.

National Burger Month Day 7: Cheeseburger at Crow's Nest

2008-05-08T12:31:00.001-07:00

Wow. This was the first disappointment of National Burger Month. I just got back from the procedure they did on my foot at the doctor's and I wasn't in the mood to cook burgers so we decided to take the show on the road. Wednesday is Happy Hour all night at the Crow's Nest. It's not too bad of a place to go to on a Wednesday night. We used to go here all the time to catch the yatchs sail in and we enjoyed the half priced beers and appetizers. Tonight I ordered the standard cheeseburger, medium with fries on the side. The fries were good. The burger, I don't know. I guess we've been spoiling ourselves the past few days with really good, fresh, juicy burgers with top quality meats and the most interesting works. So I don't know if this is a result of having our expectations heightened by six straight days of good food or that the Crow's Nest burgers were just sub par. My guess is that it's a little of both. The burger was dry, I asked for medium. The meat was devoid of flavor and had a really rough unpolished texture. Now burgers are not always polished food, but this was simply and utterly devoid of burgery goodness. If there were an a priori essential burger, this particular specimen only succeeded in being a visual approximation of that essential burger. The substance was lost in translation. I guess we'll just have to make up for this travesty on Day 8.

A bad burger deserves a bad picture. Cellphone camera this time.

The Crow's Nest is a pretty strange place. The crowd is strange, yet mixed-- old folks and young folks, but mostly Santa Cruz folks. It was Santa Cruzy. John ran into a bunch of surf bro bras who wanted to do special handshakes with him. I was having a blast watching people dance the white man shuffle to the acoustic Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin that the house band was playing. The scenery was stellar. Santa Cruz at dusk is really pretty.

But in the end, the burgers were a flop. I would have had a better burger if I went to a fast food place, and those are kind words.

National Burger Month Day 6: Chicken Teriyaki Rice Burger

2008-05-07T01:09:00.000-07:00

After five days of beef, I could feel myself turning into a cow. So despite the fact that the calendar said today was White Manna Burger Day, not-beef would be today's rule. The calendar is quickly becoming less a calendar and more a list of burgers to make.

Today's two alternative options were Japanese inspired. The burgers would be soy-something or teriyaki-something. Since the grocery didn't have a good selection of fresh fish, chicken was the winner. And even before we could even start with the chickens, I felt a light soup would be a good pre-dinner treat.

I made a miso soup with a baby spinach salad and wasabi vinaigrette. We started with a good dashi broth, and some light yellow miso. To this, we added a block of tofu in each bowl, topped with the greens. The wasabi vinaigrette was simple to make: 1.5 teaspoons soy sauce, 1.5 teaspoons wasabi powder, 1.5 teaspoons sugar, 1.5 teaspoons sake and 2 tablespoons of chopped scallions.

The burger was inspired by this recipe.

Ingredients for burgers:
3 skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into small bite-sized strips
8 tbsp. soy sauce
4 tbsp. sugar
4 tbsp. mirin
4 tbsp. sake
Some corn flour

I mixed together the soy sauce, sugar, mirin and sake, marinating the chicken in this for at least half an hour. When it is done, Andrea minced her chicken a little more finely (I didn't, saying I wanted larger chunks). The chicken was then scooped up and formed into little patties, which are then powdered with corn flour on both sides to help give them shape.

Ingredients for buns:
2 cups rice
4 cups water
strips of nori
black sesame seeds

The rice is steamed until soft and sticky. Using plastic wrap, we shaped the rice into little buns. A light sprinkling of black sesame seeds to top the buns gave them a little color and depth. Finally, the buns are wrapped with a piece of nori to keep them from falling apart.

The chicken is sauteed on a griddle for about 8 minutes per side (until a brown crust forms). After flipping the chicken, some of the marinade is poured onto the patties to give them more oomph.

When the chicken burgers are ready, they are topped with some more spinach, maybe some scallions, and a little leftover wasabi vinaigrette from the soup.

So the purists might say that this was not a burger. We did apply the definition of burger a little more loosely. But I do believe these were chicken burgers-- they're certainly more burger than some of the strange recipes I've found out there that took slabs of whatever meat, unchopped, placed in between pieces of bread and called burgers. A tofu burger is not a square of tofu in a hamburger bun, no.

The burgers were really delicious. The teriyaki sauce went very well with the rice buns. Chicken teriyaki and rice are made for each other-- just like me and burger. The only real problem was that the rice buns were a little bit sticky, which made turning doorknobs challenging after eating.

For our next rice-bun experiment, we will try making onigiri yaki (roasted rice balls).

National Burger Month Day 5: Cinco de Mayo Burger

2008-05-05T22:51:00.000-07:00

As weird as it is for a couple of non-Mexicans to put together a bunch of stuff that some American magazine calls Mexican in order to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, we went ahead and did so anyway-- especially since the source of this great idea was ~~Good Housekeeping~~ Better Homes and Gardens magazine, the ultimate arbiter of culture. (I have this picture in my mind of the tourguide at the Alamo from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, talking about tor-tee-yas) At least we didn't call our stuff "Mexican ketchup" as Good Housekeeping did theirs. We actually didn't use their recipe, instead improvising for most of the way.

Formula: Burger + Salsa + Tequila = Fun

Burger:
A pound of ground chuck
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon tequila

Salsa:
1 cup chopped tomato
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup chopped avocado
1/3 cup chopped cilantro
1 clove minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon minced jalapeño
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons tequila (or to taste)

Tequila:
Cazadores Reposado

Fun:
Cinco de Mayo Burgers!!!!

I had my burger untouched by cheese. Andrea had hers with a soft, white cheese that she melted on the burger two minutes before it was done.

At first bite, I wasn't quite sure what to make of this concoction. The burger had a smoky, chili-pepper taste and had a pretty nice kick. The salsa was great. The Cazadores had a very clean taste so it didn't overpower the other tastes in the salsa. The salsa was delicious and I wouldn't mind having it again, even without the burger. In the end, after I got through the little cognitive puzzle of putting together tequila, salsa and burger, I realized I had a winner in hand (and mouth). The burger was a bundle of complex goodness.

"Meat-related article"

2008-05-05T15:46:00.001-07:00

Fatback.

Scout sent me this link because it is a "meat-related article" on Wikipedia. She suggests that more meat-related stubs on Wikipedia need help (particularly from me). I would probably not mind taking care of meat-related stubs, but I have to ask why they are meat-related stubs in the first place. Who turned all the meat-related wholes into meat-related stubs?

SPAM Rice Burgers?

2008-05-05T10:29:00.000-07:00

My friend Akiko told me about a restaurant in Japan called Freshness Burger. They apparently have SPAM burgers on rice buns! This is great. I was thinking of ways to make buns out of rice for certain National Burger Month endeavors and this confirms that it is indeed possible to make a rice bun.

But take note of the details! Not only does the Freshness Burger SPAM Rice Burger feature genuine SPAM, it also has a fried egg! Oh how wonderful.

National Burger Month Day 4: The Cap-razy Burger

2008-05-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

The original schedule called for Town Burgers today, but we already had them on Friday so this morning, I suggested that a burger made like a caprese salad would be delicious. Andrea took the idea and ran away with it. We had some leftover pesto and a few fixings for a traditional caprese salad so the burgers tonight practically made themselves.

Ingredients:
Pesto
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Basil
Tomato
Ground Chuck
Salt
Pepper
Fresh Buffalo Mozzarella

We took about a pound of ground chuck and mixed in about one and a half teaspoons of pesto, some salt and a little pepper. The patties were grilled the way we like them-- medium-high heat, about four minutes on each side, for medium done-ness. A few slices of fresh mozzarella were layed on the burgers after they were flipped.

The buns were brushed with a little extra virgin olive oil and balsamico and toasted on the grill. Burgers were topped with a large basil leaf and a slice of beefsteak tomato.

This was a wonderful burger. The burger itself was a little garlicky, thanks to the pesto mixed into the chuck. The mozzarella wasn't too heavy, and the tomato and basil were delicious. I was skeptical of the balsamic vinegar in the sandwich, but in the end, it was perfect. it gave the whole package just the right kind of kick. Good burger. I'll have to make this one again.

National Burger Month Day 3: Pimento Cheese Burger

2008-05-03T23:10:00.000-07:00

First we slather these suckas with some cheese pimento spread.

Found it here: http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/...-pimento-chees...

Ingredients for the pimento cheese:
24 ounces extra-sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
1 (4 ounce) jar diced pimentos, drained
1 teaspoon dried, rubbed sage
1 tablespoon black pepper
2 tablespoons scallions, chopped
Pinch of sugar (or more to taste)
1/3 cup mayonnaise

I didn't have any scallions but substituted a sweet maui onion in their place. I also didn't have a 4 oz. jar of pimentos, relying instead on a 2 oz. jar. I just chucked the whole mess in a food processor and I processed.

The burger was your basic chuck, salt and pepper affair, grilled for four minutes on each side.

And then we lay the burgers on.

Overall, these cheese pimento burgers represented a refreshing change from our condiment-free burgers of the two previous nights. The cheese spread was creamy, a bit slippery even. We had to take care not to let the burgers fly out as we took our bites. I think in the future I would use a sharp cheese rather than an extra-sharp. And I might have liked more pimentos, since my 2 oz. jar was insufficient to infuse the yellow goodness with more heat. But I can't really complain. The burger was good, though not phenomenal.

National Burger Month Day 2: A Variation on the Town Burger

2008-05-03T14:32:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to do the Ultimate Burger today, but I didn't have any sirloin handy. So I mixed up my calendar a bit and did the Town Burger. This recipe is a variation on a recipe found at Town, a restaurant in the Chambers Hotel in New York. In the end, this was a big bastardization of burgers. I didn't use prepackaged patties, opting instead for the James Beard burgers I had prepared the day before. And I grilled them, rather than pan frying them over olive oil. I don't think these are the burgers that chef Geoffrey Zakarian envisioned, but it was good enough.

Found the recipe here: http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/..._poor_man.html

Ingredients:
1 to 2 tbsp olive oil (to season grill or skillet)
4 8-ounce prepackaged organic prime ground beef patties
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp salted butter
1 tbsp chopped parsley
4 english muffins, preferably Wolferman's
4 thick slices of beefsteak tomato

It's really not much more remarkable than the previous day's burger (perhaps because I used the same stuff). But the added dimension brought by topping the burger with a dab of salted butter and chopped parsley did make the overall work richer in taste. I wouldn't use english muffins again though. They ended up rather soggy, despite pairing nicely with the butter.

More to come later: Day 3 of National Burger Month.

National Burger Month Day 1: James Beard's Favorite Burger

2008-05-01T15:25:00.000-07:00

I went home for lunch today and prepped my grill. I also got my hands greasy, forming meat into patties. And thus starts my annual observance of National Burger Month.

Like a dragon at rest, the grill lies, ready to awaken and unleash its fire.

It just needs to be started.

James Beard is sometimes called the "Father of American Gastronomy." This is his favorite burger.

More information here

Ingredients are:
2 pounds ground beef
3 tablespoons finely grated onion
1 tablespoon heavy cream
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
4 hamburger buns, toasted.

Meat is on the grill.

Others lie in wait, hopeful for even the smallest nibble. Alas, they do not know that they are out of luck.

And then come the buns.

The burger.

It was the purest essence of burger.

The two most notable parts of this burger were the onion and the cream. The taste of onion was subtle-- the burger had an unmistakably onion flavor, but because the onion was finely grated, I got the sense that the onion was just lingering around, as if disembodied into a vaporous presence. The cream lent the whole burger a velvety texture. This was a successful burger-- one that did not need condiments to dress it up. No ketchup, mustard and cheese were necessary to make it exciting.

Tune in tomorrow for Day 2.

May is National Burger Month! Anyone ready for a burger a day?

2008-04-30T23:55:00.000-07:00

Winifred can has cheezburger?

EDIT (10 May, 2008): I think we're going to go off the schedule from now on. We will still be doing some (if not most) of these burgers, but I think because we can't project how much in the mood we are for one ingredient over another, we'll just be playing it by ear. But the National Burger Month observances will go on!

It's that special time of the year again. May is National Burger Month. And we have just a couple of days left to get ready. Last year, this time, I merely announced the arrival of National Burger Month and tried to get other people to celebrate it with me. Needless to say, I was the only person I knew who actually tried to eat a burger a day. I don't know why nobody else was as into it as I was. I mean really guys, it's National Burger Month. The National Burger Month!

This year, I am being more systematic about it, and perhaps others will join me. To help expedite my mission, I even prepared my Official National Burger Month Calendar of Burgers. I will actually attempt to make these burgers everyday. If you want to have burgers with me, you know how to reach me.

Most of these recipes I found through that encyclopedic burger blog, A Hamburger Today. A lot of them I found on Epicurious. Read this article by Mark Bittman from the New York Times for some tips.

Mike's Official National Burger Month Calendar of Burgers

May 1: The James Beard Burger James Beard is the "father of American Gastronomy," whatever the hell that means.
May 2: ~~The Ultimate Beef Burger, according to Cook's Illustrated.~~ A Variation on the Town Burger This is a cheaper variation of Jeffrey Zakarian's burger from the restaurant Town in the Chambers Hotel.
May 3: Pimento Cheese Burger The Pimento Cheeseburger is a regional favorite, coming from Columbia, South Carolina.
May 4: ~~A Variation on the Town Burger~~ Cap-razy Burger. This is Andrea and my attempt to make a burger out of a caprese salad.
May 5: Cinco de Mayo Burger When ~~Good Housekeeping~~ Better Homes and Gardens says something is Mexican, you know it has to be autentico.
May 6: ~~The White Manna Slider White Manna is legendary burger joint in Hackensack, NJ.~~ Chicken Teriyaki Rice Burger.
May 7: Onion Burgers The onion burger was arguably invented in Ardmore, OK during the Great Depression because onions were cheap and meat was expensive. With the economy the way it is today, perhaps the Onion Burger is appropriate.
May 8: The Juicy Loosey. The Jucy Lucy is a burger from Matt's Bar in Minneapolis.
May 9: Burgers with Mozzarella and Spinach-Arugula Pesto This would be the caprese style burger I guess.
May 10: Jamaican Jerk Burger with Orange Chipotle Mayonnaise With more available free time to cook, the weekend calls for a more complex burger. This sounds amazing.
May 11: The White Castle Clone This recipe attempts to replicate the White Castle Slider. The recipe actually calls for strained beef baby food. Yay.
May 12: Enchiladas de White Castle Burgers y Queso Since we'll no doubt have leftovers from the previous day's recipe, here is a variation. This recipe won the 2006 White Castle Crave Time Cook Off.
May 13: Beef and Andouille Burger with Asiago Cheese A little spicy sausage...
May 14: Tapenade-filled Burgers This sounds absolutely luxurious.
May 15: Seared Tuna Burgers with Ginger-garlic mayonaisse Two weeks of beef. Argh. Burgers don't have to always be cow.
May 16: Portobello Burgers with Red Pepper mayonaisse Heck, burgers don't always have to be animal either.
May 17: Garden Burger Sometimes cooking burgers from scratch gets tiring.
May 18: A simple Grilled Turkey Burger Another day without beef.
May 19: Fowl Burger It's Rachael Ray. I do not appreciate Rachael Ray. I hope this isn't foul burger. Wah wah wah...
May 20: Burger of the Gods Here's a nice, triumphant return to the beef, Alton Brown style.
May 21: Hamburger with Double Cheddar Cheese, Grilled Vidalia Onion and Horseradish Mustard This is turning out to be FoodTV celebrity chef week.
May 22: Crispy Shrimp Burger Eh. What the heck... might as well add an Emeril recipe in here.
May 23: Pressed Cuban Style Burger Bobby Flay says it's Cuban. But I don't know why it has swiss cheese.
May 24: In-n-Out Double Double Animal Style I think I'll be out driving this day. Drive-thru In-n-Out. Yay.
May 25: Homemade In-n-Out Burger Clone Having just eaten at In-n-Out, let's see if we can make In-n-Out at home.
May 26: Greek Burger with Arugula, Tomatoes and Feta My housemate leaves town on the 24th. This means that I can finally make a burger that incorporates feta since she is not a fan of goat cheese.
May 27: Scallop Burger with Cilantro-Lime Mayonnaise Scallops. Cilantro. Lime. Sounds nice.
May 28: Open-Face Lamb Burger with Pistachio Apricot Relish Cute lamb on a plate.
May 29: Inside-Out Lamb Burger More lamb! This time, the cheese is inside!
May 30: Garlicky Pork Burger Pork is good.
May 31: The Real Burger Let's end with what the New York Times says is a real burger.

That's it. Next month, fitness tips from Mike: How not to pinch an inch.

If the Emperor and Darth Vader talked Food

2005-02-09T02:01:00.000-08:00

Read this somewhere. Forgot the source.

Emperor: Lard feta.
Vader: Yeast, mustard.
Emperor: Rice!