The Real Garden Burger

This week we brought some new life to the main garden. A bunch of the brassicas were taken over by aphids so we harvested and pulled all the broccoli and cauliflower plants and bunch of the kale so we could replenish the soil with nutrients. Because so many of the same family of veggies had been planted in the same beds they attracted too many of the same kinds of bugs. All the plants began to suffer save for a few very strong kale plants which we kept. So once all the old plants were ripped out we did a bit of soil repair. About two weeks ago we all got together and planted a bunch of starts, so once the soil was ready we added them to the ground along with some radishes and carrots which needed to be planted directly in the beds.

In a few short weeks we will have tons of delicious new veggies, and because we planted them in alternating bunches we can hopefully avoid the same infestation problem. Anyway, while this means new foods to cook with in the future (I am especially looking forward to the radishes which only have a three week growing period), this means that we will have a much more limited selection of produce to work with until the new plants come in. Since we rely on the garden for the majority of our food each week, this means we are going to have to get creative with what we do have. Luckily, our hosts provide us with a bunch of bulk staple ingredients, such as brown rice, oils and vinegars, salt and pepper, red lentils, dried black and red beans, flour, and some canned tomatoes and tuna, along with a few other items.

Getting creative with food is a favorite activity of ours so naturally we welcomed the challenge. Like I so often do, I immediately turned to my Pinterest food board for ideas and stumbled upon a recipe for brown rice and black bean burgers. We have both of these things! I shouted, thrilled at the idea of anything burger-like, and tapped Dylan repeatedly on the arm until he turned to check out the recipe. After being with me for close to six years now, Dylan has become a fan of veggie burgers and right away he was on board with the recipe. We both agreed that this would make quite the nice addition to our weekly menu.

Dylan works the ingredients into a dough

From there we let our imaginations run wild at the thought of burgers and began to piece together Saturday’s adventure in the kitchen. With so many tomatillos on hand from the recent harvest (those also got torn out and replaced this week), we decided that we could turn some of them into ketchup to go with our burgers. Mayo goes great with veggie burgers too, and when we decided we wanted to treat ourselves Dylan shocked me by offering to make it since we have an unlimited supply of farm fresh eggs and olive oil from our hosts. Normally Dylan hates making emulsions, but since we’re trying not to spend any money and attempting to make everything from scratch with what we have, even he had a hard time justifying spending the almost 5$ it would cost us to buy a jar of the stuff.

We don’t have a working oven, just a two burner propane range until the oven gets repaired, so we had decided that we would buy the hamburger buns. Then our hosts decided to head out of town for the weekend and offered up their beautiful kitchen while they were away. We took full advantage. Dylan was so excited to test out some of the recipes we have been reading about in The River Cottage Bread Handbook and finally get some baking in. The stars were aligned this weekend we spent a marvelous day in the kitchen making the best veggie burger dinner we’ve had in a long time. Dylan got right to work when we returned from picking up some extra flour, yeast, and onions from the store. He started making English Muffin dough for Sunday morning (and the rest of the week’s) breakfast, along with another batch of dough for hamburger buns. Both doughs, the first simply water, salt, yeast, and flour, and the second requiring the same ingredients plus eggs and butter, were beautiful and we admired them as they proofed, rising at a visible rate in the humid Hawaiian heat.

With the doughs growing in the kitchen, we headed out to de-husk all the tomatillos so we could make our ketchup. Daniel, who lives in the other house on the property came down to dry the cocoa beans he had harvested at a friend’s farm and chat with us while we worked. It took close to an hour to husk many pounds of those purple and green things and Sasha the duck waddled over to see what we were up to just as we were finishing. While the tomatillos soaked in a vinegar water bath, Sasha followed us over to the chicken pen as she always does for the afternoon feeding. We got the ladies all fed in their coop, collected the day’s eleven eggs, and headed back to the kitchen to continue our work. The dough for the muffins, much lighter than without the egg and butter of the hamburger buns had more than doubled in size and was silky soft to the touch. Dylan rolled it out, cut it into squares, rounded the edges, and set them aside to proof again before being tossed onto the hot cast iron skillet just waiting to turn them into the beautiful and perfect treats they later became.

The hamburger buns were up next and went through the very same process. I rinsed off the tomatillos and loaded them up on a baking pan so we could roast them in the oven, the first step in our ketchup making endeavor. Dylan began chopping up the onions and roasted a few green chilies, also destined to join the tomatillos in a big pot to stew and become ketchup. Amidst all this, as if we didn’t already have our hands full, Dylan decided that one of the cauliflowers in the garden was so big that it needed to be picked right away. He headed out to grab it while I was instructed to research a marinated cauliflower recipe, so we could have it later in the week. I came up with this recipe courtesy of Martha Stewart and headed out to grab the parsley from the garden it required, along with an eggplant since we didn’t have the zucchini the veggie burger recipe called for. I also grabbed a few leaves of lettuce to go on our burgers and checked in on the black beans that we put in the crock pot that morning morning.

Bob Marley and the Wailers blasted from the speakers as we cooked away the afternoon. Dylan was quite busy with the ketchup and breads and my marinade was just waiting for the cauliflower to get a quick blanching, so I started wandering around the internet at the kitchen bar. Every time he bakes, Dylan gets this serious intensity about him, not in a “this is so stressful” kind of way, more of an “I am in the baking zone” and he remembers just how much he loves it. Back in Seattle when he was getting ready to leave the Confectional and was looking for a new job, we talked a lot about the idea of working for a bakery and though Dylan was all about it, there were no jobs available at the time. He did however end up at Ballard Pizza Co. which involved working with dough and this I think seemed to strengthen his interest in baking.

So as he worked with the dough we once again revisited the idea of Dylan as a baker. He handles the dough with such expert care and has just as much fun with the process as I have watching him work. So as we chatted, I did what I always do and began researching bakeries in our future home city after all of our travels and temporary housing is over this fall. I found a few interesting ones, including Big Sky Bread Company that grinds their own wheat, something that Dylan was super excited about, especially when I told him they use a stone grinder. Though I have no idea how that is different from whatever else is used to grind wheat, he seemed very impressed. We’ll definitely be practicing our bread making a lot more now and we will definitely be making a Portland trip or two to scope out the scene this summer while we’re living at my mom’s house in Vermont. It would be lovely to have Dylan home for dinner on a regular basis rather than at a restaurant most nights like in Seattle, so if any of you readers have baking connections in Portland, Maine keep us in mind!

Anyway, back to the kitchen. Where did I leave off? Oh yeah, blanching the cauliflower. At this point it was already six o’clock and the beans were not ready yet, the rice wasn’t even on the stove, and the ketchup had just begun to stew. We were starting to think we were never going to eat. At least the English Muffins were done and they were a work of art. I still cannot get over how perfectly they smelled, felt, and looked; just like the Thomas’s I’d always eaten when I was a kid, except better, of course, because Dylan made them. I immediately fell in love with these little round bready delights and my mouth watered at the thought of them tomorrow all grilled up and slathered with butter and the orange marmalade we made last week. When I finally did get to eat them for breakfast they were even better than expected. I had one with marmalade and one with maple butter and it tasted like the best maple doughnut I had ever had. We will certainly be making those again!

Back in the kitchen, our culinary adventure quickly kicked into high gear and in a matter of 30 minutes we had the rice simmering, another batch of onions diced and getting a quick saute along with the diced eggplant. I had the cauliflower dressed and packaged up, ready to chill in the fridge for the night, and was on to folding the laundry. Did I mention that we also were doing a few loads of laundry while all this was going on? I told you it was an epic day. So once the onions and eggplant had browned adequately, the black beans were added to the mix and the whole thing cooked some more. They needed a bit of salt and pepper but were otherwise turning out out to have quite a nice flavor already. We had high hopes for these veggie burgers.

While all this was happening on the stove-top, Dylan had the burger buns baking in the oven. They didn’t end up fluffing up as much as we had expected, perhaps they got a bit too much kneading or maybe the dough sat for too long, but either way it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The buns were perfectly light and fluffy but thin enough so we didn’t end up with over-sized burgers and strong enough so they didn’t fall apart at all. Yet another baking success added to Dylan’s tally and another recipe to keep in our regular repertoire. Once the beans, onions and eggplant mixture was finished cooking, 2/3s of it went into the blender to form the sticky binding that would hold the rest of the ingredients together enough to form patties out of it all. Once they went through that final process and were all round and veggie burger like, Dylan fried them up crispy and they were ready to be dressed and enjoyed.

At this point it was about 8:30, the latest we have eaten dinner since we got here as Dylan is usually ready to fall asleep by then. We gave up on the idea of making mayo, saving that project for later day, and the ketchup still needed more time on the stove followed by a trip through the food processor and then the strainer so we gave up on having that with our first batch of burgers out of sheer hunger. Luckily, our hosts happened to have some ketchup and mustard on hand in the fridge so we used those to dress our homemade burgers and buns, added a little green leaf lettuce from the garden and admired our beautiful dinner and a full day’s worth of work in the kitchen. It was well worth the effort though because the burgers, though they didn’t hold together quite as well as the pre-packaged kind, were absolutely delicious. We still have plenty of burgers and buns left over and eventually we will get to the mayo and finish the ketchup and further enjoy our handmade meal. 
 
Now what else can we do with rice and beans while the new veggies grow, anyone out there have any ideas?