Black bean burgers (w/ a red pepper aioli)

Not so long ago and very nearby, there was a great little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that had amazing black bean burgers. Best I've ever tasted. Then the restaurant closed down and after I had driven nearly everyone insane talking about how sad I was that these burgers were no longer in my life... someone found me the recipe. Glee, joy, fulfillment - you name it, I felt it.  I've tweaked that recipe quite a bit though (I think the cook kept some secrets), and this is what I now make to satisfy my black bean burger cravings. 

1 15-ounce cans black beans, organic, drained, and rinsed

1/4 cup whole-wheat flour

1/2 cup quick cooking oats (oatmeal)

1 cup whole, skin-on almonds, (measure the 1 cup first then finely ground in your food processor)

1/8 cup garlic powder

1/8 cup onion powder

1 tablespoon cumin

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 tablespoon paprika

1 tablespoon salt

2 teaspoons black pepper

2 teaspoons red chili pepper flakes (less if you don't like spicy)

1/2 of a large red onion, 

1/2 of a large red/yellow/orange bell pepper, seeds removed

3 (about 1/2 cup) sweet roasted peppers (recommended brand: Divina)

In a food processor, finely grind the almonds. Remove almonds from f.p. to a large bowl. Blend the black beans, red onion, bell pepper, and roasted peppers in the food processor. Mix all other dry ingredients with the almonds and then add pureed bean mixture into the other ingredients. Mix with a fork.  Let the mixture sit for 30-40 mins. (No need to refrigerate.)

The texture of the burger mixture should be just moist enough to form first into balls, and then flatten into a burger shape. Using a large spoon, scoop out about 6 oz. of black bean mixture, shape into a ball, flatten into a plump burger, and fry on both sides in olive oil until a crisp crust forms and the burger is cooked through. Should take about 3 mins per side, make sure the oil is hot but not smoking or the burgers will char too much (probably between medium and medium high heat).

Makes 6 to 8 burgers. Put uncooked mixture in the fridge if you have any left over. The mix holds up great for days.

Toppings, you ask?

The restaurant used to serve them on a bun with your choice of cheese, lettuce, tomato, red onion and a red pepper aioli.

My red pepper aioli is:

1/2 cup olive oil mayo

3 cloves of garlic

1/2 cup of roasted red peppers 

salt and pepper to taste

All into a food processor and puree. 

I also have served these with a left over squash, caramelized onion, and mint spread (recipe to come shortly), which was great, too.  When feeling lazy? Some jalepeno mustard, a couple of the sweet potato fries that I usually serve on the side, some spiced colby cheese (boar's head makes a great one), and lettuce... it even works as a wrap in a tortilla (just make your burger more of a hotdog shape and flatten it).

Cheesy hash browns w/ an over-easy egg, "re-fried" black beans, pico de gallo, and avocado

This either sounds delicious to you or like a messy mashup. And either way, you're probably right.

All these components kinda have to be made around the same time, so you'll be multi-tasking for this recipe. 

You can get the "pico de gallo" and avocado out of the way first.

What you need:

two handfuls of cherry tomatoes - diced

about 2 tbsp of fresh cilantro - chopped

juice of 1 lime

a couple slices of jalepeno (seeds in or out is your call, seeds make it hotter) - finely chopped

the green tops of about 3 scallions - chopped

salt and pepper

Haas avocado

Mix up all the ingredients for the pico - squeeze half the lime juice over the pico. 

Then dice up the avocado, place on top of the pico and squeeze the other half of the lime juice over the avocado. This will almost guarantee that your avocado won't brown while it's waiting for you. Mix up the pico and avocado and set it aside.

Cheesy hash browns - 

I recommend not going the frozen hash brown route. Instead buy a couple red skin potatoes and slice them as thin as you can. Fry them up in some olive oil until they're golden brown... could take up to 15 mins if you cover the bottom of your frying pan, flipping them every 4-5 mins, to get them golden brown but not burnt. If you'd like, you can finely chop some yellow onion and add that in, too. There is a bit of onion in the other components though, so you can also leave it out. Salt and pepper during the cooking process. (1/2 cup of shredded cheddar or a similar cheese should be added to the hash browns when they come off the heat and go into the serving dish.)

After you start your hash browns, then you can get the "refried" black beans going.

What you need:

One can Organic Black Beans (thoroughly rinsed off)

1/2 cup of water

2 large garlic cloves - finely diced

2 scallions or 1/4 cup of white or yellow onion - chopped

salt and pepper (to taste)

1/4 tsp smoked paprika (smoked is key)

1 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp onion powder

After you rinse off the black beans, put about 2/3 of the can into a bowl. Put 1/2 cup of water, the remaining 1/3 of a can of beans, garlic, scallions/onion, and seasonings into a sauce pan over medium high heat. While the beans + water mixture is coming to a boil, mash up the 2/3 of the can of beans that you have in the bowl set aside. It's pretty easy to make the beans into a paste. After the bean + water mixture comes to a boil, mix in the bean paste. Reduce the heat to between low and medium and reduce for about 10 mins, stirring every couple minutes. The beans and the hash browns should be ready around the same time. Once the water is reduce by about half, the beans can be put in a serving bowl.

During the last minutes of the potatoes cooking, you can start cooking your eggs. I prefer over-easy with this because the yolk then forms a bit of a sauce.  I can't describe to you how to cook an egg over-easy though. You'll have to figure that one out for yourself.

Assembly: Add the cheddar to the hash browns, if you haven't done that yet. Bottom layer will be cheesy hash browns, then add a couple spoonfuls of "re-fried" beans, then the over-easy egg, then top with a couple spoonfuls of the pico de gallo and avocado.  (I garnished with a couple pickled jalapenos .. because you can never have too many jalapenos.) Dig in!

Butternut squash soup

IT's FaLL!! Well, not yet. But thanks to a ridiculously hot summer and a statewide drought, butternut squash season has come early and I plan on taking full advantage. I suggest that you do as well. In all honesty, this is one of my favorite meals and one of the best things I make. You should try it.

Butternut Squash Soup w/ Sage and Parmesan

Two medium to medium large butternut squash (peeled, cut in half, seeded and diced into cubes)
1 large yellow onion
6-7 large sage leaves
heaping 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper + more to garnish soup with
about 1 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
5 cups of stock (I use vegetable stock, but you can use chicken stock. Homemade is best. If you buy veg stock do NOT use a tomato based stock for this soup. Made that mistake once. Kinda ruins it.)

Special equipment: an emulsion hand blender or a regular blender.

I use a dutch oven for most of my soups. Get the d.o. hot and then thinly cover the bottom with olive oil. Throw in the diced onion, stirring every so often so it doesn't get overly brown. You want the onion to be soft so you can probably cook over medium high heat for 6-7 mins. Add salt and pepper (to taste - about 15 grinds of a pepper mill and sea salt grinder. Be aware of how salty your stock is when adding salt at this stage.) Dice the sage leaves and put them in with the onion, stirring regularly for another 2 mins. Put in the stock and bring to a boil. Once it boils, add the diced butternut squash and turn the heat down to a simmer / slight boil. It will look like a lot of squash, but you want the squash to be even to slightly higher than your stock level once in the pot.

After about 15 mins, check the squash. It should be very fork tender and you should be able to pierce through the largest pieces easily with a fork. If this is the case, remove the soup from the burner and use the emulsion hand blender to blend the soup to your desired texture. I like it velvety smooth, other people like it chunky. I'll let you decide. Once it is blended, stir in the cup of Parmesan.  When you're serving give a couple shakes of cayenne pepper to the top of each bowl. Like this:

I serve this soup with crusty whole grain garlic bread and some kind of fruit - usually green grapes.  I don't know why the three things go together, but they work and taste delicious. Grilled cheese is also a good co-pilot or cheese and crackers.

Happy Butternut Squash Soup Season, everyone!

Tomato and Watermelon Salad

This is a little bowl of heaven when all the ingredients are at their freshest... like out of the garden fresh. But... please don't eat this salad if you don't like one of these ingredients. Because every bite tastes like all of the ingredients (to me that means delicious), and thanks to most of the ingredients' palate cleansing properties, each bite tastes fresh and new. So if you aren't a fan of basil or arugula, leave it out. But if you aren't a fan of watermelon or tomato (I'm sad for you), don't eat this.

For one serving:

2 handfuls of cubed tomatoes (beefsteak)

2 handfuls of cubed watermelon (seedless)

2 tbsp of feta

a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

5 small basil leaves (torn into tiny pieces)

5 large arugula leaves (torn into medium sized pieces)

Enjoy!

And an added bit of advice: When your bowl looks like this:

DRINK IT!

Finland - let's talk about food.

It's hard to sum up a 2 week vacation in a few sentences and a few pictures, but here goes.... eeehhh on second thought, let's start with food.

The Food: tasty, not what I expected, they've also moved to more processed foods like Americans (though their packaged food has few ingredients and is all made locally), they have a few traditional staples that show up at almost every meal (like karjalanpiirakka - rice pies that you top with butter, cheese, mustard, eggs, meats, and whatever else you can put on top of them and still fit in your mouth) but even the staples come from a store, for the most part.  Finland is home to the potato, but it's a damn fine tasting potato even if it does come peeled and vacuum wrapped from a store.  

Now my experience is largely dependent on our hosts (my far removed, but much loved cousins). They didn't really care for "traditional foods" aka reindeer, fish, and blood sausage. So the only time we saw these foods were at restaurants. (Yes, I tried reindeer. Smoked reindeer, with sour cream, in a waffle. It was salty like a good Italian meat. I declined to try it when it appeared on our restaurant table in a bit of a bloody pool, cooked quite rare. Couldn't do it. Wasn't drunk enough.)

 Food at the cottage, like that above, was great. Most of it did come from the ground or was very fresh, including homemade Rye bread with every meal. The potatoes were straight out of the ground and washed in the river water... no running water at the cottage... That topic is for another time.

 I was there during Juhannus - the week long country-wide summer vacation - so the fact that there was never ending snacking and drinking, might... *might* have had something to do with that fact. Still, we were sitting down drinking coffee and eating sweets every 3 hours. I was never hungry in Finland. Above is a platter full of pastries at one such "snack time." Not pictured is the ice cream, cookies, and chocolates that were on the same snack table.

 Restaurants in Finland were interesting. I'm glad we had locals with us because they would have confused me endlessly if we didn't have someone to explain that lunch isn't really a full menu, you have a few options, you order at a counter, you either pick up your food from another counter or get your food delivered to your table. You never show receipts for anything, they just believe that you paid and that you're supposed to be there as a paying customer. You get your own water, you have a salad bar and coffee for free with every meal, and three kinds of potato might be served on one plate, but you're guaranteed one kind, every time.

 Above is a "veggie burger" aka deep fried potato patty on a bun. Served with a side of french fries.  Where was this meal when I was at the cottage w/ the outhouse? It would have really been nice to have in my Mission: Constipation arsenal.

 We climbed a mountain / rode a ski lift up a mountain just in time for another snack. Above - waffles with cream and apples and a hot chocolate. Order at the counter, get your water and free coffee, pay for your hot chocolate and waffle, waffle gets delivered (in what appeared to be a sit down restaurant with a waitress).

 ...Snack time! Danishes with cheese and apricots, really freaking delicious, to the left - chocolates filled with chocolate, to the right - some kind of sour cream and herb chip dip. They brought out the sweets and the salty treats during this snack time.  Also pictured, the tiny spoons that they eat everything with. Tiny spoons, tiny plates, and tiny water glasses. The beer was 24 oz., the water glass was about 6 oz. (see below). No that isn't a shot glass, that is a water glass.

 I was joked with for eating reindeer food covered with rabbit food... The pizza was called Jakala, meaning lichen (reindeer food) and the mushrooms, veg, and arugula qualified as rabbit food.

 A breakfast spread. I really did love the way they eat. A table filled with variety, take a few bites of each, eat again (from a similar table filled with food) 3 hours later. They made bacon and eggs for us. ...even had "american" cheese. And in the left corner you can see the karjalanpiirakka (rice pies).

In the states, I don't eat doughnuts. In Finland, I'd be a "typical American" aka fat. Because these poppy seed, sugar covered bits of perfection were everywhere and they were always warm, fragrant, and delicious.

Kiitos ja kippis. 

Couscous w/ Mango Guacamole

So I was watching a pbs cooking show over the weekend and the host was kind of dicky about vegetarian food, claiming that every good vegetarian recipe has cheese because that's the only way they can get them to have flavor. Obviously I'm not actually taking this personal; mainly because I love cheese and veggie food w/ cheese, but here's a recipe that I make w/o cheese and with a ton of flavor that satisfies the most critical of meat (and cheese) fans.

Couscous (whole wheat) with black beans, red bell pepper, cilantro, lime juice, and scallions. (Couscous takes 5 mins... aka perfect when you're hungry and lazy.)  The only thing you cook is the couscous, everything else gets thrown in raw. Check the package for your couscous but mine takes boiling water, mixing in the couscous w/ salt and olive oil, taking off the heat, covering, sitting for 5 mins, then fluffing with a fork.  

1 cup cous cous

1 can of black beans

about 1/3 of a red bell pepper

2 scallions

juice of one lime

handful of cilantro (i love it so i use a lot)

black pepper (i salt the cous cous while it is cooking)

Put the beans and the veg in the couscous after you fluff it up, mix, add lime juice and black pepper.

To go on top of couscous: (also easy... just have to chop)

Mango Guacamole:

1 mango

2 avocados

12-15 cherry tomatoes

2 scallions

2/3 of red bell pepper (whatever you didn't put in the couscous)

juice of 1 lime

handful+ of cilantro

s+p

1-2 tbsp of italian dressing (makes the guac creamy w/o adding much flavor, also keeps the avocado from browning)

To spice it all up i use sriracha (to taste... aka a lot). Mix it all up and eat well.

This is what it looked like as I ate the leftovers with some chips and tomatillo salsa from the Mexican place down the street from my work. See, colorful, even a day later.

Easy creamy basil balsamic dressing

Put it on anything: salad, chicken, fish, veggies, cooked grains... it's delicious.

One warning... it kinda looks unpleasant. If you want a less poopy brown colored dressing, substitute a champagne or white wine vinegar... but I like balsamic, so what if it makes brown dressing?!

--2 handfuls of basil (blanch in boiling water for about 15-20 seconds. basically make sure that the boiling water touches each leaf. I blanch in a stainless steel wire mesh strainer so that the leaves can't get away and then you can shake all the water off with the same utensil.
--About 1 tbsp of olive oil mayo or homemade mayo
--1 tbsp+ of balsamic vinegar
--extra virgin olive oil needs to double the amount of balsamic vinegar used, so lets say 2 tbsp evoo
--sea salt
--white pepper

After the basil is blanched, shake off all the water and splat it into a blender, then add the other ingredients. Hit the liquefy button on your blender and boom, you have an amazing creamy balsamic and basil dressing that tastes great and makes everything dipped or tossed in it better, I promise.

Side note: I use sea salt out of a grinder and that is about 5 grinds for this recipe, about 10-15 grinds for your pepper mill. And don't use already ground pepper; it tastes like nothing. I don't even know why it exists on restaurant tables.

Oh and fun fact that you might not know, black pepper doesn't digest in your body. It sticks in the little grooves of your intestines... so keep that in mind. I still use plenty of black pepper, but I use other kinds of spice and chiles to spice foods up once I learned this fun fact.  Health side effects of those small folds of your intestines being clogged with black pepper?  WHO knows.

2nd Shelf Hummus

I lovingly refer to this as my 2nd shelf hummus because I use almost everything from the 2nd shelf in my fridge.  Again, I don't measure... but here are the ingredients and approximate measurements.

2 cans of garbanzo beans (organic, rinsed)
3 mediumish cloves of garlic
2 palmfuls of cumin
2 tbsp of tahini
juice from one lemon (go with less if you don't like lemon. this is not a problem for me.)
salt (go light on the salt w/ the green olives) and pepper to taste
a handful of green olives
about 6-7 roasted red bell peppers
2 sundried tomatoes
a few handfuls of spinach
2 tbsp of greek yogurt or cottage cheese
Extra virgin olive oil to get it the consistency that you want (I go with about 3-4 tbsp).

Everything gets put in the food processor.  The order I go with is garlic, sundried tomatoes, lemon juice, and seasonings first (to get the garlic and tomatoes finely processed). After that everything else can go in.

I serve this with veggies, tomatoes, feta cheese, and whole wheat pita.  I haven't found anyone yet that doesn't love it. Below, you can see it in a fancy Tupperware container, along with a beer. (The white is feta cheese, the red is roasted peppers. The beer is a Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy.)

My guacamole

I don't measure things... so bear with me.

This is the best guacamole you'll ever taste. There might be others that you like, but you really won't be able to ever find any guacamole that you'll be able to say... no, I definitely like this one better.  I promise. And if you don't like avocado (I know people like this), you'll still love this guac because it actually tastes like something other than green mush baby food.

2 hass avocados
2-3 green onions
10-12 cherry tomatoes
2 small handfuls of cilantro finely chopped
s & p
the equivalent of a palm full and a half of pickled jalapenos
1/2 a lime's juice or so

aaaand... to make it Salvadoran style: 2 hard boiled eggs (finely chopped)

Mix it up... eat it.

If you want to take it to someone's house as a dip, add a can of black beans (drained and rinsed and warmed up in a saute pan), and a can of corn.  You can also sit down on your couch with a bowl of this and a bag of tortilla chips and feel good about how much of it you can stuff in your face... because it's good for you!