Burger Love

I don’t know about you, but when we go away for even a few days where I don’t have to cook or clean up after meals, I miss cooking. I also miss my [and Evan’s] cooking after going without for more than a week. Perhaps some find this to be a little odd, but we find comfort and pleasure in creating warm, homemade meals and filling the house with various spice-infused aromas. Evan while relaxing at my parents’ house after our getaway with my in-laws, I already missed my own kitchen. That said, my mom always cooks our favorite things and send them home with us so that we can have a few days where we don’t need to cook/shop right away and can focus on unpacking, cleaning and getting started on the workweek.

This particular visit was no different and by Friday, my mom [aka Baba] triumphantly declared to me that I need to let her know what I’d like to take to go by Saturday AM if she is to have it ready by Sunday AM when we usually head out. Sass and cheekiness clearly prevailed when I responded “How-come is it that my local Chinese takeout place only requires 30 minute notices for food-to-go and you need a day?!”

We’ve now been home for a few days and the fridge has quickly emptied. Also, Sophia has recently discovered her love for burgers and asked that we have burgers for dinner yesterday. Since I had no dinner plans at the time of her request, I happily obliged. Braving the polar vortex I headed to the grocery store for a few necessities. Brrr… I get the chills just remembering how cold it was.

Burgers can be quite rich and so I changed things up a bit; the burgers were from turkey breast, the buns whole wheat and the fries were made in the oven from a sweet potato.

The little miss helped me cook. She was in charge of salting the potatoes once I cut them and drizzled in olive oil. Because the turkey meat was breast meat and thus rather dry, I added a panade (paste made from stale bread and milk) to keep the moisture in the burger. Sautéed shallots and garlic were added to the burger mix upping the otherwise mild flavor of the meat. Lastly, but most importantly the assembly: toasting the burger buns, adding lettuce, ketchup, onion and tomato produced a classic pub-fare plate. After digging into 1/8 of the burger, little Miss Sophia was replete.