Turkey burger with garlic hummus and avocado spread

So, to put a very big story into a very small nutshell, I’ve gone through a lot of big changes recently, so I apologize for the long gap in postings! 

I’m on a new exercise and dieting regimen, (because, well, all my adventures in cooking were beginning to take quite a toll on my waistline), and at first I was upset because I thought this meant I couldn’t create any more amazing food. But after this burger I whipped up today, I proved myself wrong on an epic level.

There are two parts to the burger, the spread and the burger itself. The spread makes an amazing dip for pita chips, celery, carrots, etc., but I used it on the burger in leu of mayo or something else to keep it from drying out. 

For the spread:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 small avocado
• 3 tbsp regular (“original”) hummus
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1/8-1/4 cup chopped tomato
• 1/8-1/4 cup finely chopped spinach
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• salt and pepper, to taste

Method:

1. Scoop out the half of the avocado from it’s shell and mash in a medium-sized bowl (think guacamole texture) begin salting and peppering slightly, but go easy
2. add the hummus and mix in well, so you can’t tell the hummus from the avocado
3. add lemon juice, tomato, spinach and garlic and stir thoroughly until mixed in. add salt and pepper to taste. it will have a VERY garlic-y taste, mixed with the mild hummus and fresh veggies

For the burger:

lngredients:

• a handful of lean ground turkey
• garlic salt
• salt
• pepper
• grill seasoning
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• a handful of spinach leaves
• one thin slice of tomato
• 1 whole wheat english muffin

Method:

1. Mash the ground turkey in with the garlic salt, salt, pepper, grill seasoning and lemon juice (there should be enough seasoning so that you see it when you fold and mash the meat). don’t over-mash or the patty will get goopy.
2. spray non-stick spray on a skillet and heat over medium-high heat, when it’s hot place the patty down. let cook 7 minutes, flip, then cook about 7 minutes again, or until it is cooked thoroughly.
3. place on English muffin with the spinach leaves, tomato and the garlic/hummus/avocado paste spread on one of the buns

enjoy! you will!

12 October 19 Permalink

(on this weeks episode of “Kelsey learns things the hard way”): Allergies

So the other day our friend Brandon came over for a night of videogames and general debauchery. I met Brandon through my boyfriend, and we have this interesting and endlessly entertaining relationship where about 85% of our exchanges are insults, put-downs and death threats. It’s not uncommon for us to graphically explain to the other how we plan on taking their life whenever we’re in the same room. I’m sure a big part of it is my subconscious, animalistic female reaction to their videogame bromance, but I digress…

So anyway, Brandon comes over and I ask them what they want me to make for dinner. Keith (the bee eff) recommended I take another stab at the chicken parm I’d made a few nights earlier. I really liked how it turned out at the time, but already knew once I tasted it that there were a few things I’d do differently if I made it a second time around. 

I get ready to walk a block to the Ralphs and Keith and Brandon come with me because Brandon tells me he has a dairy allergy so the “parm” part of the chicken parm probably wouldn’t go over too well. I tell him I’ll just skip the cheese part. He then tells me he “is also allergic to whey and hates tomatoes.” I threaten him with death and start to brainstorm ways to cook him a separate piece of chicken. 

As we walk to the store I ask him what exactly whey is. Apparently, it’s something they use to churn butter? And they put it in a ton of things for added flavor or syrup or something? All I remember is that he said they had it in the McDonald’s lemonade and he was sick for like 8 days. So no whey (haha…no way…get it?) and no dairy. So I get all my ingredients to make chicken parm and Brandon’s seasoned, baked chicken breast. 

So there I am in the kitchen an hour or so later. I make the tomato sauce from scratch, let it simmer, defrost the chicken and slice the mozzarella. I pull out the pan, lay down Keith and my pieces of chicken on one side and Brandon’s whey- and dairy-less piece seasoned with vegetable oil and poultry seasoning on the other. It’s really cute. Like, goldie-locks-and-the-3-bears cute. One side of the tray has two chickens, the other a specially made chicken. I’ve triple checked each ingredient that’s gone into his and I’m feeling proud. About 30 minutes later, the chicken is ready, I’ve dished it up, and presented it to them with pride. Brandon tells me he “really appreciates” that I went out of my way to make him a special kind of chicken and I’m proud.

So we’re eating. It was absolutely amazing. I’m just spacing out and nomming my creation when Brandon says, “Hey Kelsey, are you sure you didn’t put anything in this?”

I think he’s messing with me, in typical Brandon style. “Why?” I ask, “Is it so delicious you can’t believe I made it without any dairy or whey?”

But his face doesn’t change. He means it. “No, I just, I have this feeling. I…I can’t explain it to someone who doesn’t have allergies.”

James, Keith’s room mate and the one who told me to put a spoon under my lip while chopping onions, enters the room and offers Brandon a Benadryl. Brandon shakes his head. James lingers in the doorway just in case.

“Well, what all went in it?” Brandon asks. I rack my brain. I even restarted his chicken by rinsing it off completely with water when I realized that the bread crumbs I was using to season it had whey listed as one of its ingredients. 

“Just…vegetable oil and this poultry seasoning. And neither of those things have whey in them, right?” I ask.

Everyone looks back and forth at each other. 

“Well,” I ask, “What happens if you eat whey?” I’m expecting him to say that he gets a bad stomach ache for a few days like a few lactose-intolerant people I know.

“If I eat whey I can’t breathe.”

The room goes even more silent. “Oh.”

“Yeah. I almost died when I was like 4 because I ate a whole funnel cake. They had to take me to the ER and inject me with straight insulin.”

“Whoa,” James says, “That’s like…”

“Pulp Fiction status.” We all chime in.

At this point I’m laughing nervously and trying to play it off as another playful death-related antic between Brandon and I. Except this time I’m actually killing him and I don’t know how.

Suddenly I think of something. “Well, I cooked yours in the same oven as ours. And in the same pan.”

…

It was like the face-palm heard ‘round the world.

…

Brandon turns to look at James. “Yeah, I think I will take that Benadryl actually.”

They all then proceed to tell me that things cooked in the same pan will probably end up mixing at some point (even if, visually, there appears to be no cross-over). Brandon was able to fight off his untimely death by not eating any more chicken, taking the Benadryl, drinking about half a litre of water and eating several pieces of a sourdough bread loaf he’d brought with him from home. So the rest of the night Keith and I split Brandon’s rejected poison chicken, and Keith then downed his chicken parm so quickly that he ended up choking and had to force himself to throw up in the bathroom to dislodge the baked, breaded goodness from his epiglottis. 

So long story short. Cook someone’s specially prepared food in a completely different area. And my chicken parm is, quite literally, to die for. 

28 July Permalink

Two new recipes I need to try

http://www.skinnytaste.com/2011/04/chicken-rollatini-with-spinach-alla.html#more

and 

http://www.skinnytaste.com/2011/04/chicken-rollatini-with-prosciutto-and.html

I think I’m going to make the second one tonight…and maybe take a video of the process to share with you all! Thoughts?

20 July 2 Permalink

(very) quick and easy pasta and egg white lunch

After finishing a workout I realized I needed to eat something, but wasn’t about to stuff my face full of calories or heavy food.

So here’s what I threw together. It wasn’t FANTASTIC, but it hit the spot and filled me up with minimal calories and minimal effort.

Ingredients:

• 3 egg whites
• about 1/4 box of spaghetti
• one leaf of basil (it’s all I had but if I had more I would have used more)
• dried parsley
• garlic salt
• some chopped mozzarella cheese

Just cook the pasta, scramble and season the 3 egg whites, and throw it all together with some vegetable oil and salt as a “sauce.”

good in a pinch!

20 July Permalink

How To: chop onions without crying

This is another one of those posts directed at people like me who somehow completely missed the culinary bandwagon as they were growing up and, apparently, don’t understand how simple things work. 

I guess as a kid I must have attributed onion-induced-lachrymation to some sort of magical phenomenon where chopping onions = a complete emotional breakdown, because when the time came in my cooking learnings to chop one myself for the first time I was sort of excited to be a part of the “onions make me cry” club. Instead, here were my findings:

1. Contrary to my previous beliefs, onions do not inspire pain-free, reflexive tears.
2. Contrary to my previous beliefs, chopping onions does not make you spontaneously sad.
3. Contrary to my previous beliefs (but probably not really), chopping onions does not initiate a culturally-driven Pavlovian response. 
4. Onions make you cry because they contain a devilish, eye-attacking gas (Wikipedia tells me it’s called sulfenic acid) that burns like fire once its vapors reach your eyes.

Now, I am a total wimp when it comes to any type of pain or even mild discomfort, so I started researching ways to include fresh, chopped onions into recipes without burning my eyes out of my skull. Here are some of the methods I came across.

• Chew gum. This actually worked for me, which was surprising. My guess is that the smell and taste of the gum somehow overpower the fumes’ ability to affect you? I don’t know. It was pretty cool, but a waste of a piece of gum if you’re like me and you want to proof-taste things as you cook. 
• Chop onions by running water. I guess the water…traps the fumes so they don’t make it up to your eyes? (I would make the worst scientist ever). This would be good except it could be a huge waste of water if you plan on chopping multiple onions.
• Hold a spoon against your teeth and under your upper lip. My friend James told me to do this while I was looking up anti-crying techniques. I tried it to pretty much no avail, which doesn’t surprise me because 1, it sounds like voodoo black magic and 2, I’m 92% sure he was fucking with me.
• Cut a cone out of the bottom of the onion because the base holds the majority of the sulfenic acid. This one sounded the most scientifically plausible, but I couldn’t figure out how to go about cutting a clean cone out of the onion’s base without fancy tools. But then I realized I was retarded and here’s why:

You don’t have to cut a cone OUT of the onion, you just have to cut AROUND said cone.

Example:

Cut at an angle from the top of the onion to the base, getting wider at the base (my angle here is pretty much non-existant but hopefully you get the jist.

The onion will look like this once you do another side. Keep working your way around the onion until the whole thing looks like a cone with the wide part at the bottom and the tip at the top. After a while you only have a small bit of the center left, which I can usually chop quickly enough for it to not sting too badly. 

So there you have it. Kelsey, outsmarting mother-nature since…2010.

17 July 21 Permalink