Mushroom-Swiss Grass-Fed Burgers (and one Portobello Burger)

Welcome to my Flexitarian Table.


Remember that post awhile back where I declared myself a Flexitarian, someone who eats mostly vegetarian food, but occasionally eats meat? That was inspired by a conversation I had with my vegetarian (and sustainable-food-knowledgeable) friend Kara. That conversation led me to this book, The Flexitarian Table. And that book led me to this meal.


Now that my omnivorous (and meat-loving) boyfriend is back, meal planning has required a bit more thought. For the past 6 months, it was simply, "What do I want to eat tonight?" Now it's, "How can I make a meal that we'll both love without going back to my formerly meaty ways?" Which brings me back to this wonderfully written and culinarily inspiring book. The author explains that his family of foodies has a variety of requirements: vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous. He was a chef in a vegan restaurant for years, although he himself eats not only eggs and dairy, but also meat and fish.


The thing that makes Peter Berley's book so unique and engaging is that he finds creative ways to essentially make one meal that can satisfy many dietary needs by making simple ingredient switches. Yes, sometimes this may require an extra pan or two, but by and large it doesn't make prep any more difficult.


Inspired by his strategic meal-planning, I came up with this simple dinner that could please not only myself and Ross, but our friends The LeCroys, who most definitely know their burgers. By making the burger "mushroom-Swiss" themed, that made it easy for me to just use a portobello mushroom as my burger patty, eliminating the need for extra ingredients or a whole other meal or side dish.

INGREDIENTS

1 lb. 100% grass-fed ground beef (I used 85/15%)
1 egg, beaten
salt and pepper
1 tsp. Worcherstershire sauce (I never spell that right)
a few dashes burger or grill seasoning
4 slices baby Swiss cheese
3 large portobello mushroom caps (1 kept whole, 2 chopped into chunks)
1/2 large white onion, sliced into half-moons
4 brioche buns (or any hamburger buns you want)
2 lb. baby yukon gold potatoes
big handful chopped fresh herbs of your choice (I used parsley, green onions, and rosemary)
3 T. olive oil
3 T. butter
mixed salad ingredients, any you like


STEP 1:

Boil the potatoes until tender, but not falling apart, in a large pot of salted water. Drain, rinse with cool water, and set aside.

STEP 2:

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix the beef, Worchestershire sauce, salt and pepper, and grill seasoning with the egg using your hands. Shape into three burger patties. Set aside.

STEP 3:
In a nonstick skillet, heat about 1 T. olive oil and cook onions and mushrooms, seasoning with a bit of salt and pepper, until they're browned to your liking. Remove from pan and set aside.

STEP 4:

In a large skillet, melt the butter and oil. Place the potatoes in the skillet, pressing down gently to smash them slightly. Allow to cook until browned on one side. Turn over and cook until browned on all sides, sprinkling in the herbs about 5 minutes before you're done. Sprinkle with a generous amount of salt and toss in the remaining butter and oil in the pan before serving.


STEP 5:

Meanwhile, heat a grill pan over medium heat. Grill the burgers, and the portobello mushroom cap, until desired doneness, adding cheese about 4-5 minutes before you want to take the burgers off the pan.



STEP 6:

Place each burger on an open bun. Top with some of the onion and mushroom mixture and any condiments you want. Serve with the potatoes and salad, if you're having salad. Enjoy!


A few notes on the ingredients: I wanted to use 100% grass-fed beef, because even though I wasn't going to be eating it, supporting sustainable farming practices when feeding my friends and loved ones is just as important to me as if I were chowing down on the beef myself. (Sarah even commented on how different in color my burgers were than burgers made from regular corn-fed ground beef - nothing creepy, it just makes you cognizant of the fact that whatever what you eat eats, you eat too. Corn-fed beef is fattier and lighter in color. The grass-fed beef I bought was a rich brick-red, with very white, not yellowish, fat.)


I also splurged on the bakery brioche buns, which turned out to be vegan (I didn't know that when I bought them). I usually opt for whole wheat buns, but these were absolutely delicious, and they really added that "restaurant quality" to the overall meal. The potatoes turned out great, too! I think I just found my new favorite way to cook potatoes. I've been seeing a lot of the Food Network-types make these "slightly smashed" baby potatoes, and now I understand why: when you brown them in butter and oil, and season them well, the gentle smashing opens them just enough to so that they soak up all the flavor from the pan, but they still retain that pleasant, not-too-mushy baked-potato texture.


I hope this meal, as well as The Flexitarian Table cookbook, inspires you to create meals that bring everyone - no matter their style of eating - together for a meal. Because aren't all disputes ultimately solved at the dinner table?


Thanks for reading! More soon...

A New Year's Two-For-One Special

I love when I turn on my camera (in today's case, to document the first wave of the impending blizzard, which is without a doubt a sign of the apocalypse) and find photos of a meal that I captured, then forgot about. It's exciting - except of course, when I made it so many days or weeks ago that I have no idea what went into it in the first place. So, enjoy my haphazard recreation of roast beef (the cut is anyone's guess, but you can bet it was a cheap one) with a mustardy brown sauce, broccoli, and sweet potato mash.

On the other hand, there's nothing like a January blizzard in Chicago to make you crave - and defiantly cook - summer grill food. In tonight's case, BBQ and caramelized onion turkey burgers. Or, as I affectionately call them, Turkey Burgers That Don't Totally Suck. I mean, am I the only one who sees a turkey burger on a restaurant menu and has to fight the urge to rip the menu to shreds with my steak knife? Most are dry, flavorless, and uninspired. Hopefully, my BBQ burger, featuring SmokeDaddy BBQ sauce, will give you a hankering for a patty of something other than ground chuck (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I'll just get the forgotten roast beef out of the way first, since I can't accurately list the ingredients, their approximate measurements, or how long I cooked things.

ROAST BEEF WITH BROWN SAUCE, BROCCOLI, AND SWEET POTATO MASH
GUESSTIMATE AT INGREDIENTS

1 large piece of beef, an economical (tough) cut
salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, steak rub or other dry herb mixture
olive oil and butter

Dijon mustard
brown sugar
red wine
balsamic vinegar
beef stock?
fruit preserves or chutney?

1 head broccoli, cut into pieces

1 very large sweet potato
milk, butter, salt, nutmeg

Heat butter and oil in a large nonstick skillet until foam subsides.



Season the beef on all sides with salt, pepper, and any other dry seasonings you want. (Steak rubs work well for this sort of thing.)



Sear the roast on high heat on all sides until a brown crust forms.




Make a sauce using red wine, vinegar, stock, fruit preserves,brown sugar, and mustard. I'm not kidding when I say you can just put a couple spoonfuls of each of these in a pot, heat them up and whisk them, and you will have a sauce that's pretty tasty. I don't blame you if you don't trust me, though.

Pour the sauce over the beef. Cook at 325 for about 3-4 hours. (This, by the way, is not what I did. I remember eating this beef, if not cooking it, and it was really tough. That's why, if you buy cheap, tougher cuts of meat, you should have the time on hand to roast or braise them for a long time. Trust me on this. This is why poor Italian grandmas never left the kitchen - they were braising the gristly parts of the skinny cow until it tasted just as delicious as the fatty, expensive parts.)



Boil broccoli in a pot of salted water until just tender, about 3-4 minutes. Do not overcook.



Add milk, butter, and nutmeg to the hot sweet potato and mix until semi-smooth and creamy.






Here's what Ross had to say about the meal (I made the wise decision to save this in my Stickies application):

"It's a 'meat and potatoes' meal for a meat and potatoes football team: broccoli - all about a tough defense. You got your gold potatoes and your black steak. Well, not black. Black and gold, like the Stillers! The sauce was what dreams are made of."

It would help to mention that we (apparently) were watching a Steelers game during dinner.

He went on to say, "The best part was one of the edge pieces. The middle wasn't that great, but I can chew through anything with my remarkably sharp incisors." What a guy.

Like I said before, just make sure you cook the beef for long enough, on a gentle enough temperature, to make it really tender. The easy weeknight way to do this would be to put it in a crockpot and leave it on low while you're at work. Crockpots, I might add, are completely underrated. 10 minutes of prep in the morning while you have your coffee, and you get to come home to a delicious hunk of meat in its own gravy.

Moving on to a different variation on the age-old hunk of meat: my BBQ Turkey Burgers That Miraculously Do Not Suck At All. Or: Further Proof That BBQ Sauce is Infallible.



INGREDIENTS

1 lb. ground turkey (get the kind with a little bit of fat - I usually buy 90% lean for burgers)
1/2 c. seasoned bread crumbs
1 egg, beaten
salt and pepper
ground cayenne pepper, a few dashes
Pam spray
sliced pepper Jack cheese
whole wheat burger buns

1 large yellow onion
2 T. olive oil
salt and pepper
a couple pinches sugar

BBQ sauce (I used SmokeDaddy)
mayo (unless you hate mayo)

1 head fresh broccoli

5-6 carrots, the cute kind with the green parts still attached. Why? Because I think they're better.
squeeze of honey (I used some homemade pear honey my aunt made, but the kind in the bear is just fine)
1 T. butter

STEP ONE

Thinly slice the onions. In a nonstick skillet, heat 2 T. olive oil. Cook the onions, with a little salt and pepper, over medium heat, stirring and flipping every now and again, but not too much, until they are deeply brown. When they're about 2-3 minutes from being done, throw in the pinch of sugar to help them caramelize. Set aside and keep warm.







STEP TWO

In a large bowl, mix the ground turkey, bread crumbs, egg, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper (to taste) until combined. Shape into patties and set aside.



STEP THREE

Heat a grill pan or a nonstick skillet, with a light spray of Pam, over medium-high heat. Cook the burgers about 4-5 minutes on each side. When they're about 2 minutes form being done, place a slice of cheese on top of each and cook until burgers are cooked through (this is not the time for medium-rare burgers), and cheese is melted.





STEP FOUR

Boil some salted water and cook broccoli until it's just tender. Meanwhile, thinly slice the carrots on the bias. In a separate nonstick pan, heat 1 T. butter over medium-high heat. Saute the carrots, seasoned with a little salt, for a few minutes, then add a few tablespoons honey. Continue to cook in the honey and butter until carrots are just tender, about 5-6 minutes.







STEP FIVE

Spread some mayo (if you're going for it) and some BBQ sauce on a bun. Place a burger on top, and top with some of the caramelized onions. Serve with the carrots and broccoli. Enjoy!



I'll give this the official Fearless Cook rundown.

From Ross: "The carrots are amazing. Best carrots I've ever had. Can I have another burger?"

MY VOTE ON MY DISH: Hmmm...I give myself 8 stars. I have made turkey burgers before, but not like this. They were juicy, flavorful, and I actually didn't feel like a cow eating it - there was nothing about them that was suspect. I, too, agree that the carrots were magical. I've never been a huge fan of cooked carrots (I love them raw), but I will definitely be making them this way again. I felt like I was eating an indulgent, carby side dish, but really I was just having another veggie! If I had to change one thing, I might actually ditch the cheese (and no, I have not been abducted by aliens). Despite my cheese obsession, I have to say it didn't really add anything to the burgers. The BBQ sauce and onions were such powerful flavors that the little old slice of cheese just couldn't make himself heard.

Overall, it was a great dinner. Almost makes me forget about the snow...



Almost.

Cheers to 2009! Hope it's off to a great start. Thanks for reading!

King Corn

It all started Sunday at noon, with this text to my friend Stef:

Im in over my head with this bbq. Can u come over around 3?


Actually, it all started last Fall, when I saw the trailer for the documentary King Corn. Two young filmmakers quit their jobs in Boston and move to Iowa for a year to plant, grow, and harvest a single acre of corn to find out how we as a species are now subsisting almost entirely on this one crop.


I knew imediately that I wanted to see it, but time got away from me, and I never saw it on the big screen.

Cut to April, 2008. I read the book The Omnivore's Dilemma, and the whole first third of the book goes into incredible detail about how virtually everything we put into our bodies is somehow derived from corn.

It seemed like this particular area of interest was trying to get my attention. So I set out to document a little experiment of my own: Create an entire Spring BBQ menu, using ONLY ingredients that contain no trace of corn, and serve it while we have a screening of the documentary.

Adam drizzles the finishing touches of EVOO on his hummus.


Lindsay gets the party started.


The corn-free menu turned out to be much, much harder than it sounds. When you consider that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is in about 99% of processed food (things like buns and condiments included), not to mention that almost all meat we buy in America was fed on a diet of corn, grocery shopping for this endeavor was no small feat.

FEARLESS FACTOR: A billion. When you take into account the stringent menu guidelines, and the fact that my guest list started at 10 and grew like corn in June into about 20, it's easy to see why I sent Stef the frantic text (special thanks to her, my hard-working sous-chef).


I wanted to grill mini-burgers (sliders being a popular Chicago bar treat), so I headed to Whole Foods to find some grass-fed beef. Here's a re-creation of my conversation with the butcher:

ME: Hi, I'm trying to do this themed BBQ where everything has to be, er--anyway, do you have any grass-fed beef?

HIM: Actually, no, we don't have any.

ME: [Crestfallen] Oh.

HIM: But our bison is grass-fed.

ME: I'll take 4 pounds.




I also planned out a pasta salad and from-scratch crockpot baked beans, and Adam brought his world-famous hummus, which got demolished in literally under 5 minutes. (Special thanks, Adam, and also to Lindsay, who brought the most amazing Lemon Bars--note to self, Lemon Bars are not an acceptable breakfast food).


Making the baked beans was fully a two-day process: soaking the beans overnight, then letting them simmer all day in the crockpot takes some time. I also had to be careful to buy only organic ketchup, since most ketchup is packed with high-fructose corn syrup. (I'd like to take a moment to address any of you who are caught up in the ongoing Heinz vs. Hunt's ketchup debate. Organic ketchup tastes about 1000% better than either of those brands, so consider this my conscientitious objection to the condiment war.) I would've also liked to add some pork, but finding pork that hasn't been grain-fed (wild pigs, I found out, eat acorns) is impossible. So the beans became vegetarian.

The pasta salad was pretty easy to keep corn-free. Even the most processed pasta tends not to contain corn (but I bought organic just to be safe), and I added some veggies and goat cheese (admittedly, I cannot confirm that the goat who made our cheese was not fed corn, but I took some creative license).

I was careful to read the ingredient label on everything I bought, including the ciabatta rolls I used as hamburger buns. That's one great thing about living in a big city: Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are always there when you want to throw a party with a needlessly complicated menu.


Veggie Trays by Stef.


PASTA SALAD

2 12-oz. bags tri-colored veggie pasta (rotini or other noodle)
12 oz. log goat cheese
1 English cucumber
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved and seeded
2 c. arugula leaves
juice of 1 Meyer lemon
1/4 c. EVOO
salt and pepper
red pepper flakes to taste
2 T. chopped fresh dill
2 T. chopped fresh basil
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. mustard

Cut the cucumber in half, then slice it into thin half-moons. Halve and seed the tomatoes. Place in a bowl and add some salt. Let sit in the fridge for about an hour, until the salt has drawn the water out. Drain in a colander, and rinse. Shake dry. Boil the pasta. While it's cooking, in a small bowl, combine the lemon juice, salt and pepper, dill, basil, red pepper flakes, sugar, and mustard. Whisk in the EVOO slowly. Set aside. Drain the pasta, and pour it back in its cooking pot. Add the cucumbers, tomoatoes, and arugula. Working quickly so that the pasta stays warm, stir in the dressing mixture and crumble in the goat cheese, and stir until the goat cheese is melted and evenly coats the pasta (it will look like a creamy mayo-based pasta salad). Refrigerate until ready to serve.


Kelly and Adam!


BAKED BEANS

2 lbs. dried beans (I used 1 lb. small red beans and 1 lb. pinto beans, but navy beans are the ones most commonly used)
1 bottle organic ketchup
1 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. mustard
2 T. Worchestershire sauce
1 c. bean cooking liquid
salt and pepper

In a large pot, soak the beans in the fridge overnight with enough water to generously cover the beans. The next day, simmer the beans in the same water they soaked in for about 2 hours (do not salt the water), until they begin to get tender. Drain the beans, reserving the cooking liquid. Place the beans in the crockpot. Pour in the rest of the ingredients and stir until well-mixed. Put the crockpot on low and cook for about 4 hours, then turn the crockpot on high and cook for 2 more hours, stirring occasionally. The last 30 minutes and while serving, leave the lid of the crockpot off so the beans thicken.

If I were the type of woman who used the word "Tablescape," I'd use that word now.



BISON MINI-BURGERS ON CIABATTA ROLLS (I've cut the recipe I made down to 1/4 of what I made, so this is based on 1 lb. of meat)

1 lb. ground bison (buffalo) meat
generous drizzle olive oil
1 tsp. Worchestershire sauce
salt and pepper for grilling
sliced Cheddar cheese (optional)
6 bake-at-home Ciabatta rolls (or other bun)
Toppings like tomato, lettuce, ketchup, mayo, etc.

Get the charcoal grill ready about an hour before you want to start cooking. Add the olive oil and Worchestershire sauce to the meat and squish around until it's incorporated. Form into six mini-burgers. Salt and pepper both sides of each patty, and place on the grill. Cook about 3 minutes on each side, or until desired doneness. When you flip them, add the cheese to the top and let it melt while the other side cooks. Serve on the buns with desired toppings.



Portobello "burgers" for the veg-heads.


Always season your meat.



THEY CAME, THEY SAW, THEY GRILLED: THE SCREENING

The film was pretty good. It wasn't an all-out gross-fest like Fast Food Nation, but it was just as eye-opening. It got a little shaky when they showed the cow with a hole in its side (caused by acidosis, a condition cows get when they're fed an unnatural diet of--you guessed it--corn), making the contents of its stomach available for all to see (and scoop out). (Thank you, grass-fed bison farmers of the world!)

Had I actually bothered watching the film that I dragged all my friends into BEFORE the much-ballyhooed screening, I might have thought twice about planning an entire party around it. It wasn't boring, but it wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs, either (truth be told, at times, it was kind of a downer). It lacked the caustic voiceover acrobatics and contrived mega-drama of a Michael Moore film, but was shocking in its own right. I think that a lifelong aversion to soda (basically HFCS and food coloring in a can, and the best possible way to cause obesity and diabetes) is the most lasting effect it will have on my consumption. (Interestingly, rendering irrelevant the Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola debate--peace at last, and all thanks to corn!).


So, since there were far too many judges to record their comments here (although feel free, Corn-Free guests, to comment here on the blog), I'll have to make my own decisions:

THE FILM: 7 stars.

THE FOOD: 8 stars.


Self-congratulatory? Perhaps. But I'd argue that without a good solid menu, I'd have been hard-pressed to get 20 people into my living room to watch a documentary about farming.



I proved to myself (once again), that try as I might, I simply do not like arugula. I want to SO BADLY! It's so...elegant! And delicate! Peppery! Trendy! But alas, if I could do it over again, I'd leave it out of my otherwise delicious pasta salad. The beans came out great, to my utter shock, and despite seeming highly time-consuming, they're actually very low-maintenance. I might have to make this a signature BBQ dish. As for the burgers, again, I was shocked to find them quite tasty. I was worried all along that bison, being a very lean meat, would dry out on the grill, which is why I preemptively added the olive oil. It seemed to work, and with all the great things bison has going for it nutritionally, I could be a full-on bison believer (I am, at the very least, a grass-fed believer, thanks to the open-wound-cow-stomach-thing).

THE BOTTOM LINE: Fast Food Nation didn't succeed in turning me off to (scrumptious) Egg McMuffins forever. And only time will tell if I will take the time to seek out grass-fed bison (or beef, if it's available) in the long run. But what the film did (and what I suspect was its intention) was to further make us all aware that what you see isn't always what you get, and that it does take a higher level of consciousness to eat truly healthfully (not just for the health of our bodies but the health of the bodies that end up inside ours, as well).

I'll end with a quote from Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and one of the interviewees on the film):
"Everything we eat is no more and no less than the body of the world."

Ross proudly showcases the contraband.


Thanks to guests and blans alike. More soon.