What's in a burger?

What is a burger? Is it a beefy lump of beef with extra beef and nothing else, except maybe ketchup? Or is it simply a type of sandwich wherein some form of primary meaty substance (hot) is placed between two pieces of a bread-like carrying vehicle, with or without buffer areas of cheese, leafy or unleafy vegetables, and/or sauces of various kinds? Such is the fundamental and existential question I faced in preparation for dinner tonight.

A brief background explanation: My friends and I get together roughly weekly for a themed potluck dinner. Not everyone can make every week, and people have joined or left the active group as their lives have brought them to town or taken them away again. But the dinners have been occurring regularly going on five years. The formula is simple: each week a different person hosts, and each week the host chooses the theme. Over time, we've all become better cooks and had our share of transcendent glory and epic failure. But mostly we just have a good time. And the themes are really what make the food special - it's a challenge and an enticement to experimentation, and it has made for some rather interesting meals. (Please feel free to replicate - it's awesome.)

So, tonight: The theme was "Gastro-diner," like gastropub, only diner food. The explanation was, and I quote, "Your favorite diner foods, dialed up to eleven." (Totally in character for the host, too.) So what leaps to mind when you think of a diner? Well, the Burger. And the Meatloaf. And the Pancake. And the Rootbeer Float. Which pretty much provided the basis for our meal, actually, and I quickly claimed the Burger/Meatloaf territory. :-)

Now what you have to understand about our dinners is that part of the fun is seeing just how unexpectedly and differently you can interpret the theme and still produce something delicious. (I shall never live down my bringing Garlic Chocolate-Chip Cookies with Lavender Icing to a dinner themed "Hybrids." But that's a different story...) So I was faced with the question: What is a burger? And how does one dial that up to eleven in an unexpectedly delicious way? And now's probably a good time to mention that I had not cooked anything elaborate in a while and needed to scratch that itch. So here's what I decided to make:
Looks like a burger, doesn't it? Well...

I decided I wanted to make a recognizable as a burger but about as un-burger-like as possible, and also dial it to eleven. The finished product ended up being as follows (in my best nouvelle-cuisine gastro-diner menu-speak):

A rondelle of roasted melange of cherry-smoked coho salmon, fresh pork, sweet corn and quinoa, served atop crispy Indian flatbread with organic arugula, lime tzaziki and tomato-tarragon jam perfumed with cumin and Amontillado sherry.

And here's the layman's description: A slice of a cylindrical meatloaf containing salmon, pork, corn and quinoa. Fried naan dough that didn't rise as expected so became more like tortillas. Garlic-lime greek yogurt. Tomato jam.

God it was good! (...no matter what you call it.)

Let's start with the meat. I wanted to make something that was light and yet still rich and smoky like a BBQ hamburger. So, living in the Northwest, my first thought was to hot-smoked salmon. Unlike lox, &c., which are cold-smoked (exposed to the smoke only, not the heat of the fire,) hot-smoked salmon has the texture of cooked fish, if a little drier, as well as a rich smokiness akin to bacon. And I decided to make my own. In my kitchen. Of my apartment. Oy. The making of the salmon is a story for another time, but suffice to say it basically worked and I quickly had a pound of hot-smoked salmon to play with. I combined it with a pound of ground pork, some sweet corn, and some quinoa, as well as a little oil, some bread crumbs and a few eggs to hold it together. And then I roasted it rolled in a cylinder inside foil. And then it came out of the foil, got a coat of apricot jam, and went under the broiler to crisp up the outside. It tasted warm and smoky, and held together even though it wasn't heavy. And the corn provided little pockets of sweetness that burst open in each mouthful. Overall it was an unusual combination of tastes I associate with either warm or cold weather. On it's own it would probably be a little overly smoky but combined with the other pieces it was lovely. The tomato jam is something I've always wanted to try to make. We think of tomatoes as a vegetable, usually associated with salads or savory sauces, and even when really ripe and wonderful, they're not exactly what I'd call sweet. Not like a peach or strawberry. But when you cook down a pasta sauce, for example, you start to get a rich sweetness that can come from nowhere else but the tomato. And I'd tasted sweet-ish tomato-based pastes in restaurants before so I decided to make tomato jam. Since tomatoes by themselves, plus a bit of sugar, reduce basically to a simple, warm stickiness, I added tarragon to give the flavour a green high note, and cumin to fill in the middle of the register.

The bread was a challenge. I followed this recipe here. And while I usually don't follow recipes to the letter, this one I did. And I failed. I have no idea what went wrong but the dough didn't rise as expected. Oh it rose a bit, but not enough for me to make the expected little rounds of lovely, poofy, stretchy naan. Instead, it got stuck at the beginning of it's second rise so I had to cut my losses and flatten out the little balls of dough into thick tortillas and then quickly fry them. They actually tasted really good and provided a good vehicle for the burger, with enough crispness to contrast but enough chewiness to stay together. I'll try the recipe again, maybe messing around a little more next time...The arugula and the tzaziki were last-minute thoughts. I wasted something green and fresh and arugula is a green that can hold its own in a swirling storm of flavours and textures. Alone it's a little bitter, but in this combination it tasted just tart enough to prevent the sandwich flavours from all mushing together. And the tzaziki was to do just the same thing. After I tried the tomato jam I could tell the sandwich needed something cold and tart and fresh to keep the whole thing balanced - something with a little bit of kick to keep the eater awake. Plain greek yogurt with lime and garlic is harsh on its own, but a good foil for sweetness.

Overall, it really was a storm of flavour and sensory experience, all at once hot and cold, sweet and tart, smoky and fresh, bright and crispy and deep and rich. And it was really satisfying to make - from washing the tomatoes and setting up the smoker all the way to slicing the loaf and assembling the first sandwich. When I finished mine, my felling was really "I needed that." Not just to eat it, but to get back in the kitchen and dial something up to eleven.Here are the recipes. Keep in mind that each one could be really good on all sorts of other things. I'll give some ideas with each.

TOMATO JAM
Could be good on a bagel with cream cheese, as a glaze on a roast, on steamed broccoli, or with cheese and crackers.

12 Roma Tomatoes
½ C Sugar
¼ C Amontillado Sherry
¼ C Tarragon Leaves, dried
½ t Cumin, ground

1. Clean and halve tomatoes and remove stems. Puree in food processor until mostly smooth.
2. Pour tomato puree into saucepan with sugar. Cook on medium heat, stirring frequently. Reduce to one-third original volume.
3. Add spices and sherry. Reduce heat to low and cook down to sticky paste. Do not brown or burn.

INTERESTING MEATLOAF BURGER MEAT
This could be a good stand-in for ground meat in various places, whether on the BBQ or as meatballs in sauce or as ground meat for filling pasta.

1 lb Salmon, hot-smoked, shredded
1 lb Pork, ground
2 ears Corn, sweet, kernels cut off
½ C Quinoa, dry
4 Eggs, beaten
¼ C Olive Oil
½ C Panko breadcrumbs
3 T Paprika, smoked, ground
1 T Tumeric, ground
1 t Salt
1 T Pepper, black, freshly ground
2 T Pepper, white, finely ground
1 T Urfa Biber, coarsely ground (A chili pepper with a mild, warm heat. Substitute ¼ t Cayenne)
Apricot Jam
Heavy-Duty Aluminum Foil

0. Preheat oven to 500°F.
1. Steam quinoa until completely cooked (no opaque white spot in the middle of the grain.) [I use the microwave: 1:1 quinoa to water in a bowl covered with a plate, on high for five minutes. Let sit five minutes, stir, add half as much water again, and microwave another five minutes.]
2. Combine meat and grains in large bowl and mix thoroughly. Add eggs and oil and mix thoroughly. Add breadcrumbs and spices and mix thoroughly. Refrigerate 30 minutes.
3. Make two cylinders of the mixture wrapped in heavy-duty aluminum foil - 1 foot long and about as big around as a soda can or tunafish can. Cut of all but one inch extra foil at each end of cylinder, leave partly open (you want some excess moisture to escape so the log solidifies a little more.)
4. Bake logs on roasting pan in the top of the oven for 40 minutes.
5. Remove foil, replace logs on roasting pan, spread with thin layer of apricot jam.
6. Broil until jam bubbles and browns. Roll ¼ turn, spread a little more apricot jam, broil again. Repeat 4 times until all sides have been broiled and are brown and sticky.
7. Cool for 5 minutes. Slice diagonally about ¾-inch thick.

LIME-GARLIC TZAZIKI
Try as salad-dressing, sandwich spread instead of mayonnaise, or sauce for chilled roasted vegetables.

1 C Nonfat Greek Yogurt
½ Lime
3 Cloves Garlic, twice through garlic press.
½ t Salt
1 t Pepper, black, freshly ground.

1. Mix all of the above.
2. Eat :-)

Wacky Dinner Number One

So I had this idea: I like to cook, I like to feed people, I like making up recipes just to see what happens, and I like talking about these wacky recipes with the people I am feeding while we are all in the middle of eating said funky foodstuffs. In other words, I decided to invite a few people over to be guinea pigs to my mad culinary experiments. And I am truly flattered that they agreed to come and did so with with high expectations. But enough about the idea, on to the food. How's this for a meal? (Delicious photos by Smita.)

I started with a risotto - but one based entirely on basic Japanese ingredients. Instead of using olive oil to saute and brown the rice, I used sesame oil. Instead of vegetable or meat stock I used a broth from smoked bonito, sardine, and kelp with some white miso paste for texture and flavour depth and a little bit of ginger. Instead of wine I used mirin. The vegetables were kabocha squash and shiitake mushrooms. And to garnish, black sesame seeds, super-finely sliced shiso, and soy sauce. I still used arborio rice for texture, and I also used a very little cheese to hold it together - a very light-flavoured hard Mahon.
The entire recipe was my attempt at a sort of macro-scale fusion recipe. I wanted to see if the texture of risotto could be successfully combined with entirely Japanese flavour. I'm excited that the result is a resounding "yes!" The mouth-feel of this experiment was exactly the same as my more traditional risotto recipes, but the taste was of a sweet miso-mushroom soup with the umami of soy, toasty overtones of sesame, and sweet earthy bites of squash. The greatest, yet most subtle, change was definitely the liquids. It was hard to really identify how the fish stock and miso differed from chicken or vegetable stock, but the effect on the final dish is great. I think the european-style stocks have much more onion, carrot, garlic, and savory herbs than their Japanese counterparts. Mirin is also worlds apart from white wine - much sweeter and with slightly beery flavour. I think that's why the dish came out sweet - next time I'll use less.

Making this dish gave me a great excuse to go to Uwajimaya, the glorious Japanese supermarket. Since I don't read Japanese, figuring out which is the right dried soup base to use and how to use it, or which miso paste is which, is always fun - involving deciphering packaging diagrams and finding numbers in the directions from which to interpret measurements, timing, and whether something might kill you if eaten wrong.

The second course was a pork tenderloin, rubbed with a paste made from cocoa nibs from Theo Chocolate, wild peppercorns, sugar, olive oil, sage, paprika, and cumin. I ground the spices and chocolate with a mortar and pestle, adding a little olive oil at a time until the paste became the consistency of a dense chocolate mousse. Plain, the mixture tasted tart and nutty, with a little heat from the paprika and pepper and some dusty warmth from the sage. Rubbing it on the pork smelled like paprika and chocolate. Baking it smelled like cumin plus some sweet smoke. And eating it was a very mild nutty aftertaste to the pork, which I slightly overcooked. It looked really good, but wasn't as richly flavoured as I'd hoped. Perhaps marinating in the rub overnight would have allowed the flavours to penetrate and develop. So the verdict: tasty, but a little mundane.
The accompaniment to the pork was shaved par-boiled golden beets with sea salt, pepper, and truffle oil. Boiling the beets made them not quite so crunchy, but I kept some firmness by not boiling too long and then immediately chilling the beets in cold water. Shaved vegetables are fun to arrange because they are so malleable and delicate. These came out looking like fluffy yellow roses on the plate. And they tasted sweet and grassy at the same time - the salt magnifying the sweetness, the pepper adding a little tart twinge, and the truffle oil smoothing out the texture and rounding out the taste. I also used some leftover shiso to garnish this plate, and the shiso went surprisingly well with the beets - a cool and herbal complement to the sweetness of the beet.

The next course was dumplings (ravioli, really) of goat cheese, carrot, and onion. I grated the carrot and onion with the brilliant multi-purpose "Kitchen Mama" tool I got at Daiso. This grater produces basically a rough paste of anything put to it (including knuckles, I'm sorry to say.) When you pulverize vegetables to such an extent, lots of the liquid comes out. As I didn't want the filling to be watery anyway, I used a looseleaf tea bag to squeze off all excess moisture. Cheesecloth would work, too, but more stuff sticks to it and the tea bag was already a convenient pouch-shape. Note, as well, that when you grate onion it's that much more potent - whew! I mixed the drained carrot and onion with plain fresh goat cheese and a little salt and pepper.
As wonderful as it is to hand-make dumpling skins, this is where I decided to cut a corner. I found, after much searching, locally-made, freshly-packed shu-mei skins that did not contain all of the preservatives and stabilizers common to nationally-distributed ones. They're basically just a delicate circular noodle. You put a bit of filling in the middle, run a wet finger around the edge, fold in half, and press opposite edges together to make a little fat half-moon. Honestly, you could put anything in them (and I intend to try!) I fried the finished dumplings in canola oil though you can steam them, too. Shu-mei skins are very delicate so these were finished quickly - puffy, crisp and golden once I finally got the oil temperature right. Next time I'll use a thermometer so I can tell you what "right" really was, though I'm sure you can find lots of frying info online. There wasn't actually much taste of carrot, despite the amount I used. The cheese was dominant, with a little onion and a little sweetness reminiscent of fresh carrot juice.

Sponge candy was completely unknown to me until I started looking for a way to reproduce the core of the Whopper. No, not the hamburger - that I can do. I mean that mysteriously crisp and malty candy covered in chocolate. There are al sorts of approximations out there, but the one that seems to hold the most promise is sponge candy. As I mentioned, I'd never heard of it, but when I told my mother she exclaimed, "Oh yeah, like honeycomb. I love honeycomb! Oh, can we please make some when you come home for Thanksgiving?!" So it appears I missed something. That, or it was popular in the 1950s. Likely the latter, since candymaking is something of a vanishing art.
It is very simple: sugar, vinegar, and baking soda. Remind anyone of science-project volcanoes? When you mix the baking soda into the vinegar-primed melted sugar, and stir like crazy, you get lots of little expanding bubbles trapped in the sugar. When you pour out the sugar into an oiled baking dish and let it cool, it hardens into a delicate, crunchy sugar matrix (that you break apart by hitting it with a hammer!) To get it malty, I added malt powder mixed with the baking soda. Malt powder is basically another type of dried, crystallized sugar (maltose, among a few others.) But it has that very distinctive flavour (of Whoppers!) Suffice to say, I, too, ow love sponge candy, especially malted. I'm going to try another batch with more malt and also using the recommended half-sugar-half-corn syrup mixture (which should enable me to get the molten sugar to hard-crack temperature with less browning and also enable a lighter, fluffier candy when hardened.) But still: yum!, especially when dipped in leftover cream cheese frosting from birthday-cake adventures.
Last of the evening was a nightcap. A fabulous bar called Knee High Stocking Company makes a drink called the "St. James Cooler" that is a mixture of Jameson whiskey, St. Germain elderflower liqueur, lemonade, mint, and soda. I've had it. It is delicious and refreshing. And it inspired me to try a similar concoction, though a calmer version. I mixed 1 measure Powers' Whiskey, 1/2 measure Extra Dry White Vermouth, 2 Tablespoons elderflower concentrate ("Fladersaft" from Ikea, of all places), and a dash (1/8 tsp) lavender vodka that I made last year. More on the vodka some other time. Shake up that mixture with ice and serve neat. Refreshing and relaxing at the same time. I think it could be good both before and after dinner.

So that was the feast. I loved making it and my friends loved eating it and ultimately that's what it's all about.

RECIPES:

JAPANESE RISOTTO
1 C Arborio rice
3 T Sesame oil
3 C Fish stock
1 C Mirin
Double-handful Shiitake mushrooms, sliced
Double-handful Kabocha squash, cubed
1/3 C White Miso
1/3 C Mahon cheese, grated
Garnish:
Shiso Leaf, finely sliced
Black Sesame Seeds
Soy Sauce

1. Over medium-high heat, toast rice in sesame oil until rice is slightly transparent and starting to brown.
2. Add 2 C fish stock and squash, reduce heat to low, and simmer, stirring frequently.
3. When most liquid gone, add remaining stock, mirin and mushrooms. Continue simmering and stirring.
4. When all liquid gone, add cheese and stir to melt.
Garnish servings with shiso, soy sauce and sesame seeds.

CHOCOLATED-PEPPERCORNED PORK TENDERLOIN
1 Pork Tenderloin (they're mostly about the same size).
2 T Cocoa Nibs
1 T Sugar
1 T Wild Peppercorns
2 T Olive Oil
1/4 t Cumin, ground
1/2 t Paprika, ground
1 t Sage, ground

1. Grind the cocoa nibs and sugar to a paste in a mortar and pestle.
2. Add peppercorns and some oil and grind to paste.
3. Add herbs and a little more oil. Grind into paste.
4. Add a little more oil and grind fast until the paste becomes aerated and almost a mousse.
5. Trim pork and rub with paste.
6. Bake at 350 until just center is still pink.
7. Remove from oven, cover with foil, and rest for 10 mins.

GOLDEN BEET FLOWERS
Golden Beets
Sel Gris
Truffle Oil

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil.
2. Peel the beets and boil them whole until a knife slides in easily, but not all the way through.
3. Pour water from pot and then set under cold running tap to cool beets.
4. Remove beets from cold water when cool, dry, and shave with mandoline.
Mound on plate and garnish with salt and oil.

CARROT-ONION DUMPLINGS
Shu-Mei Skins
2 Carrots
1 Onion, small
1/3 C Goat Cheese, fresh and plain
Salt and Pepper

1. Grate carrots and onion.
2. Mix with cheese and season to taste (not too much salt.)
3. Place a teaspoon of filling into the middle of a wrapper, moisten the edge of the wrapper with a finger dipped in water, fold over and press wrapper edges together. Try not to leave much empty space inside the dumpling - they can pop when cooked.
4. Fry in your oil of choice. Cook a few at a time to keep oil at the same temperature.

MALTED SPONGE CANDY
(This is the recipe as it should be, not exactly as I tried it the first time.)
1 C Sugar
1 C Corn Syrup
1 T White Vinegar
1 T Baking Soda
1/3 C or more Malt Powder (You can get different kinds from any homebrew supply store - I used amber.)

1. Grease a glass baking dish. (Some recipes say use metal and butter but I had good luck with Corningware greased with canola oil.)
2. Heat sugar, vinegar and corn syrup slowly, stirring constantly. Use a pot of at least 2 quarts to allow for expansion.
3. Pre-mix baking soda and malt powder (I've yet to try adding the malt powder earlier or changing the amount of baking soda or vinegar.)
4. When the molten sugar reaches 300-310 degrees Farenheit (hard-crack candy stage) pour in the powder and mix like mad while the mixture inflates.
5. When well mixed and puffed, pour into the greased pan.
6. When cool, break with mallet. Eat plain or dipped in delicious things.
(Note, some recipes say that while the candy is cooling it can be scored so that it will break into even pieces. I'll have to try that.)