Roasted Potato Salad with Horseradish Dressing

A few weeks ago, I was visiting my friend and Big Daughter’s godmummy, Kirsty, in Toronto. We put our four girls to bed, with fewer tears and trips downstairs from the big daughters than expected. We breathed a big sigh of relief, poured some bubbly wine, probably too much bubbly wine, and went outside for a grown-up girl supper.

Kirsty had found a recipe, in The Globe and Mail I think, for potato salad. A recipe for potato salad? Is that really necessary? But, roasted potatoes and a horseradish dressing? Could there be any more perfect combination? How could you not want the recipe for this?

But, I didn’t write it down and I’m not organized enough to email and get it, or to follow it for that matter. So, I made one up, after being in the kitchen while Kirsty made her's, and this may just revolutionize your basic summer salads.

After I made this, I had to go to Toronto again to get more horseradish. I used the last and so the annual trip to Kozlik’s was necessary. Alright, I was doing other stuff too. But shopping for horseradish and mustard was very near the top of the to do list on Saturday. The only things above it were strong black coffee and peameal on a bun, to quell the effects of too much bubbly wine.

This would be really perfect with new potatoes and, if you are barbecuing, I would roast the potatoes on a grill tray on the barbecue. It is divine when it is warm but is also really delicious cold, so you could easily make it in advance.

I didn’t put as much horseradish in the dressing as I might have for two reasons. The first, I wasn’t making this for myself and I realize that not everyone thinks horseradish is as perfect a condiment as I do. And, the second, I didn’t have enough left.

Which brings us to the question, why didn’t I just go and get some more? Well, I have high horseradish standards and few jars will do. My favourite is not available here in Nova Scotia - yet, I'm told. I can’t abide any jar that has an ingredient list longer than: horseradish, vinegar, water, salt.

Fresh horseradish would have been good but, without spending two hours in the car with a teething nine month old and a stroppy four year old at supper time, there was none of that to be had either. Plus, it isn’t something that many people keep in their vegetable drawer, but they should.

I served the salad with some of Sheila's smoked salmon from our local and micro greens from the Friday market in Mahone Bay. It was a perfect summer supper. The salad would suit any grilled meat or fish. It would be great with burgers. It would make a nice little potluck dish as well.

Roasted Potato Salad with Horseradish Dressing  as inspired by Kirsty’s reproduction of a recipe from The Globe and Mail

2 pounds potatoes

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 tablespoons yogurt

3 tablespoons mayonnaise

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon good, hot horseradish (you might want less or more depending on your taste and your horseradish)

Sea salt and fresh ground black pepper

1/4 red onion finely chopped

Handful of parsley and chives finely chopped

Preheat oven to 450º. Wash and cut the potatoes into bite size chunks. Toss then with the olive oil and some salt and pepper in a roasting pan. Put in the oven and roast for about twenty minutes for a convection oven, a little longer for traditional. They need to be completely cooked and getting golden and crisp. Remove from oven and cool just until they are warm. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.

Make the dressing by putting the yogurt, mayo, vinegar, horseradish and salt and pepper to season in a small bowl. whisk to combine. Pour over the roasted potatoes. Add the red onion, parsley and chives and toss to combine. 

All the Cool Kids are Doing It

So, it started with Smitten, while I was away. I thought about and thought the likelihood of getting really good reliable stuff in the Caribbean and thought, ‘No, not yet.‘ Then I was visiting my grandmother in Niagara Falls when I saw some top notch green. But, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t approve. Then, Feisty did it too. And, I started to think about it some more and then I saw some at the market on Friday which looked first class and I thought, ‘If everyone else is doing it, maybe I should too.’

I thought I was pretty cool, getting there early enough to score. Even if it was unintentional and I was really just hoping to bump into Wanda and a bag of her wonderful lettuce. But, there I was, Tilly in the sling, looking back, over my shoulder to make sure there was no one chasing me to my car. I had bought not just one but two. I was worried that if anyone unlucky enough to be too far back in the queue found out, they would be after me. After me and my asparagus.

We love asparagus, even Stephen, provided it has been drizzled with melted butter. Poppy has just developed a fondness for raw asparagus. And, all Tilly has eaten for a week and a half is asparagus and banana. Anything that lets us captures this has to be good.

SmittenKitchen’s was drop dead gorgeous, as pretty much anything she does is. Feisty Chef’s was local and she cooked it on the barbecue which has inspired me to experiment more with my barbecue, not today though. I was reluctant to put something out there that would draw such obvious comparison but it was just too damn delicious not too. 

I used my usual pizza dough recipe, but substituted spelt flour. This made the crust biscuity crisp. I don’t like doughy or bready pizza, so it was perfect. The best thing is, the dough rolls out so thinly and easily this way that we had enough to make some cheesy garlic pizza for a certain four year old.

I didn’t have any mozzarella and Poppy was shouting,‘Asiago, I only want asiago,’ but I wasn’t sold on the idea. I had some plain Foxhill quark which, I was pretty sure would just lend a creaminess without mucking about with the flavour of the asparagus.

I almost picked some sorrel because I thought it might add a little lemony zing, but, again, I just wanted to taste the asparagus so, much to Poppy’s delight, I decided on some roughly chopped fresh chives. 

The asparagus I had was really thin. It would be much easier to shave if it was a little bulkier and you probably won’t need as many spears. Smitten thinks you could do this with a mandolin. I can’t imagine that you would escape with all ten fingertips. The vegetable peeler is the way forward for me.

And then, we rushed to get it all done so we could watch our Stephen cross a continent while we ate.

Shaved Asparagus Pizza with Spelt Crust

7 grams (1 1/2 teaspoons) active dry yeast

1 tablespoon honey

125 ml (1/2 cup) warm water

240 grams (1 1/3 + 1/4 cup) spelt flour (or bread flour)*

1 teaspoon sea salt

3 tablespoons olive oil

22-24 spears skinny asparagus

225 grams ( a little under a cup) plain Foxhill quark (ricotta would be great)

Roughly chopped chives

Salt and Cracked Black Pepper

Shaved Parmesan

Drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

Put yeast, honey and water in a small bowl and let sit for 5-10 minutes, until yeast blooms.

Meanwhile, put flour and salt in the bowl of mixer with a dough hook attachment, or in a medium sized bowl with a wooden spoon

When yeast is ready, add it to the flour with the 3 tablespoons of olive oil.

Mix everything together. If you are using a stand mixer, knead for a few minutes, until it is smooth and elastic. If you are doing it by hand, you’ll have to knead a bit longer but your arm muscles will thank you.

Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl and cover. Let rise about an hour, until doubled in size.

While the dough rises, you can shave the asparagus in long strips, hold on to the tough end and run the peeler down the length.

After the dough has risen, preheat oven to 425º.

Punch down the dough.

Lightly oil a pizza pan or heat up a pizza stone.

Roll out the dough to a 12” circle, I didn’t need any flour, you may want to lightly dust your work surface with flour.  Put it on the pan or on a pizza peel if you are using a stone.

Spread the quark on top and season it with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with the chives. Top with the shaved asparagus.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden around the edges and you can see the very edges of the asparagus just starting to brown.

Remove from the oven, top with parmesan and extra virgin olive oil and serve.

*And, if anyone would like to take care of the math for me, it would be much appreciated.

Saturday's Bounty on Sunday

For most of the winter, our weekends are missing something. We are left wondering what to do with our Saturday mornings. Sure, we could make the hour long drive to town and enjoy what is over-wintering at the Halifax Farmer’s Market but, Poppy can’t fish for sharks in a small stream there. She can’t run around, hand in hand with her best bud, charming vendors and, we assume, safely disappearing down trails through the woods. She tells me that the cupcakes aren’t as good as at our market. And, there is no burly German baker man to give her cinnamon buns just because she happened to pass by and say hi.

So, now that our Saturday mornings are peaceful and we are no longer at a loss for things to do, we get to spend the rest of the day thinking of how we will use our market bounty. It is early days for most produce here in Nova Scotia but we managed a decent haul in spite of our not-quite-warm-enough-yet days.

I found cremini and portobello mushrooms, radishes and some crunchy sprouts, which I was compelled to buy even though I have about five kilos of unsprouted crunchy sprout mix here in my kitchen. I got spinach and mixed greens and beet greens with gorgeous almost baby beets on the bottom . I got whole wheat bread with poppy seeds, of course, from Chris, the above mentioned burly German baker man and, to Poppy’s great delight and despite arriving late-ish in the morning, a package of his always-sold-out-it-seems juniper ham.

The ham is always gone by the time we arrive, even if we get there shortly after eight, Chris is inevitably selling the last package to the person in front of us. To his credit, he has tried to steal the last package back out of the unsuspecting person’s basket just to try and please Poppy, but in the end he had to fall back on the cinnamon bun to cheer her up.

We like brunch at our house and Saturday’s haul, rounded out by a few local eggs, left us well set up to breakfastize something we saw Anna Olson cooking up on TV.  She made her mushrooms with brandy and cream and her bread was a sourdough rye from Ravine in St. David’s, around the corner from my grandmother’s which is where we were staying when we saw the TV show. And, Anna used a mixture of wild mushrooms but we had nothing in the house except for what we got at the market on Saturday and sometimes, simpler is just better.

Poppy Seed French Toast with Sautéed Cremini Mushrooms and Juniper Ham

400 grams (4 heaping cups) quartered or halved, depending on size, cremini mushrooms

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

Salt and pepper to taste

4 slices of good bread (use what you like)

2 large eggs

2 tablespoons milk

Salt and pepper

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

4 slices of really good ham (optional)

Fresh chives, chopped

Heat heavy bottomed pan and add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 of butter. Add mushrooms. I like to add the salt at this point when I sauté mushrooms, it is one of the few things I season before I am finished cooking. Cook the mushrooms over medium high heat until they start to brown. They will go a bit grey and get a little watery first and then the water will evaporate and the flavour will concentrate and they will start to brown. Remove the mushrooms from the pan.

While the mushrooms are cooking, whisk eggs with milk and a little salt and pepper in a shallow dish. 

In the same pan, without washing, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 of butter. soak each side of each slice of bread in the egg mixture and transfer them to the hot pan. Cook until golden brown, about a minute on each side.

Transfer each slice to a plate, top with ham and share mushrooms between the four slices. Sprinkle with chives.

Poppy had her’s with ham, I had mine without and next time, I will be putting a little wilted spinach on mine.

Healthy??? Chocolate Chip Cookies

Okay, so a recipe for a healthy chocolate chip cookie isn’t something I would usually leap at with great enthusiasm. I imagine heavy, doorstopper like pucks with the texture of slightly moistened saw dust and tasting pretty much like not sweet enough cardboard.

I know that sugar alternatives have come a long way since back in the day when my mother read Sugar Blues and virtually banned the stuff from a good part of our childhood but those memories still sting. And, I was preparing for this trip to the Caribbean and the thought of exposing more flesh than what is on show wearing jeans and a rain coat was weighing heavily when I came across this one. 

Like the veggie burgers, it comes from The Golden Door Cooks at Home by Dean Rucker and Marah Stets.

I don’t usually find a lot of inspiration in vegan baking. I believe in butter. That isn’t to say that I think vegans are in any way misguided. On the contrary, I admire them and believe it is an amazing thing to commit to. But, there are times when animal products seem to belong in cooking and, more often than not, baking is one of them. On the other hand, I also think it is important to get outside of one’s sweet and buttery comfort zone every now and then.

By now, I probably don’t need to tell you that I was a little skeptical but it had been about ten days since my last sweet and I was pretty sure that these would be a justifiable caloric splurge. I had even stayed away from the dark chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, also known in our house as God’s gift to cake, that I had made for my sister’s birthday. More admirably, I had managed to stay away from the leftover frosting in the fridge.

While we were making these, I read the recipe to Poppy and was explaining what we had to do. I stopped in the midst of collecting ingredients to rescue Tilly, who was tangled up in some chair legs and, because I often have the attention span of a gnat these days, I was distracted. A few minuted later, I was reminded of the job underway by Poppy saying, 'Hurry up, we have to mill some oats now.' I decided we would be making these again just to mill oats in the food processor.

These cookies were good. There was no sawdustiness. The texture was a little crispy and a little chewy which isn’t a bad thing in a cookie. They were nicely sweet.  I will admit to adding 3 times the amount of chocolate chips called for because I don’t think you can call cookies chocolate chip cookies if you have to search for the chocolate chips. Does that make them less healthy? Yeah, it probably does. 

The cookies didn’t make it to Poppy’s preschool, the intended destination, because the recipe only made eighteen in the end. Maybe we made them too big but they weren’t huge. Maybe, because the recipe comes from a health spa, they are supposed to be really small. But, by the time we had tasted a couple to be sure they were good, there weren’t enough to go around so we had to eat them ourselves, except for the ones that went to some friends’ house for dinner.

I probably ate four of them and I enjoyed them completely but, with each one, I couldn’t help thinking that, with a little leftover cream cheese frosting, they would make pretty amazing whoopie pies. I thought about it and I thought about it some more and then I had another little think about it but I didn’t do it. I swear.

I am going to make these again sometime, when I don’t have leftover cream cheesy distractions around to cloud my judgement because they were good and if stepping outside the buttery baking box turned out this well all the time, it might be a lot easier to feel good in my bathing suit.

The only change I made, other than the quantity of chocolate chips, was to use grapeseed oil instead of vegetable oil spray. Just use a piece of paper towel to spread a thin film of oil over the parchment.

Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies from The Golden Door Cooks at Home by Dean Rucker and Marah Stets

Grapeseed oil

1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup chocolate chips

1 tablespoon ground flaxseed

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup maple syrup

1/2 cup applesauce

3 tablespoons grapeseed oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350º. Line two baking sheets with parchment and, using a piece of paper towel, cover the parchment with a very thin film of grapeseed oil.

In a food processor, pulse the oats to a fine meal. It should take about ten minutes. Transfer the oats to a large mixing bowl and add the rest of the dry ingredients.

Whisk together the wet ingredients and add to the dry. Use a spatula to fold them together until just incorporated.

The batter will be the consistency of muffin batter.

Spoon rounded tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheet, 11/2 “ apart. Use the back of a wet spoon to flatten each cookie out a bit.

Bake one sheet at a time for about 20 minutes, until light golden brown.

Transfer to cooling rack.

These won’t keep for too long but it didn’t seem to be a problem here.

It's coming.

I am hoping that it is true that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

I am struggling to post between unpredictable internet and visiting and being cooked for and entertained and the matter of a small person attached to my hip in an effort to prevent stair disaster. I am working on it though. Slowly, but surely...

Thai (Inspired) Slaw

I find that in the spring I get inspired by Thai flavours. Light and fresh and clean and well, just yummy really. 

At our house, we are also slaw heads. Well, Poppy and I are and we strive to turn Tilly into one and Stephen just eats what is put in front of him for the most part. So, vegetables and salads and slaws reign.

I had some leftover Red Lentil Veggie Burgers and some mango ‘ketchup’ to use up and we had a bunch of stuff that needed eating before we left and it was a beautifully warm spring day out and I really didn’t feel like doing anything inside and this just seemed to jump out of the fridge and cupboards. To boot, I had a very cranky almost four year old and she needed a project. So, I had a helper too.

I spent quite a while in Thailand pre-Poppy and I can be pretty particular about Thai food. But, I have no problem with Thai-inspired as long as it doesn’t try to pass it off as the real thing. So, this is unabashedly Thai-inspired. 

It should have loads of chilli but my main audience for this wasn’t yet four. I wouldn’t mind some sliced right in with the slaw but to make it a little milder, you could blend a little into the dressing. 

It should also have peanuts, not almonds but I was trying to use things up and I did think about going to get some but it was twenty minutes to supper and I wasn’t striving for authentic. 

And the tofu, well, did I mention I was trying to use things up? I wouldn’t normally put smoked tofu in a slaw but it worked here. You could leave it out completely but with it, this slaw becomes pretty much a meal in itself. And, you could use any firm tofu, it doesn’t have to be smoked and would likely be better if it wasn’t.

The dressing emulsifies beautifully with an immersion blender. It would in the jug of a regular blender as well. If you don’t have one, just mince the garlic and ginger. You can mix the ingredients together and strain after a couple of hours if you don’t want the bits in the dressing. You will have more dressing than you need which I don’t think is any hardship because you should find it pretty versatile. It would be pretty good on cold noodles or mixed greens for a quick salad.

This would also be a pretty good accompaniment to just about anything that comes off your barbecue this summer. 

Thai Slaw (serves 6 as a generous side dish)

2 cloves garlic chopped

1inch piece of ginger peeled and chopped

2 tablespoons brown sugar (unless you have palm sugar to hand)

1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce

4 tablespoons rice wine vinegar (use the unseasoned kind if you can)

4 tablespoons grapeseed oil (or another vegetable oil)

1/2 green cabbage finely sliced

1/3 red pepper (that was all I had)julienned

1/3 yellow pepper julienned

1/2 GIANT carrot (see photo, or 1 medium carrot)julienned

150 grams firm tofu (optional)cut into cubes

Handful sliced almonds (or if you have unsalted peanuts, even better)

Handful chopped cilantro/fresh coriander

Put garlic, ginger, brown sugar, fish sauce, vinegar and oil in a bowl, if you have an immersion blender, or in the blender jug and blend until smooth. 

Put all the veggies on a serving plate or bowl.

Gently saute the tofu, if you are using it, until it starts to crisp up on the outside.

Toast the almonds, or peanuts, if they aren’t already. You can do this in the oven, or in a dry pan on the stovetop.

Sprinkle the tofu, almonds and cilantro on top of the veggies.

Dress with half the vinaigrette. Toss and serve.

2010 Rhubarb Trilogy Complete

Just for the record, I would like to say that not cooking is not so bad. We have the lovely and talented Janine making scrummy meals and that is just fine. She even leaves little unsalted bits for Tilly. Nice. 

Another bonus is that my hands are looking and feeling lovely. Poppy has stopped telling me that they feel like Daddy’s stubbly chin. I haven’t been washing and then working and then washing and then taking a photo and washing and...

I think the Caribbean humidity is helping too. As the fault lines in my bamboo countertop will tell you, winter is a dry season in Canada.

And, while it isn’t the best thing for your skin, a little sun helps appearances too.

Tomorrow I will no longer have an almost four year old. I had pictured a beautiful birthday cake post. It will have to wait until the at-home celebration. The request has been made for an ice cream cake, which sounds like disaster to me in 30º sunshine, but hey-ho, it is the request. And, because I certainly don’t feel up to cleaning up gallons of melted ice cream, we have ordered one from a place that says they can do it.

In the meantime, you will have to make due with rhubarb sorbet. I wish I had some right now. 

+++

In the process of making this, Little Daughter in sling ‘helping’, one of my favourite bowls was broken (the green one) and consequently, half of the rhubarb I had, the first fresh of the year, was riddled with tiny little shards of green pyrex. So, I couldn’t make as much as I had hoped. 

Big Daughter loved the stuff, rhubarb head she is. I thought it was nicely rhubarby but a little too sweet. I added two cups of syrup before tasting, amateur mistake really. I did think the texture was divine, silky smooth, easy to scoop after being in the freezer for a couple of days and completely ice crystal free. This is all made possible by the sugar syrup. My sorbets are usually harder and a little crystally because I am so mean with the sugar.

I have an ice cream maker. I don’t think my husband knows I bought it and he, somehow, still either hasn’t noticed, or maybe just doesn’t care what the big silver thing in the cupboard is. And, after two years, it is way too late to get cross about it.

You can make it in any ice cream maker, according to manufacturer’s instructions. Or, you can even still make it with just a freezer and a mixer. It takes longer and it may not be as silky smooth but it should still taste fresh and sweet and tart and just like more.

You will have extra sugar syrup, which you can keep in the fridge for ages to use next time you make sorbet or for sweetening iced tea and coffee.

This does need a bit of advance prep just because of the cooling and chilling required. So, if you wanted to have it for supper, I would start in the morning. If you have leftover syrup, it will still need a bit of time to chill the rhubarb before freezing it.

I passed the rhubarb puree through a sieve to remove any stringy bits which, it turns out, was totally unnecessary. If you don’t mind the risk of a few stringier bits, I would save the time and the washing up, and not bother.

When I get home, and strawberries come into season, we will be eating this with them. I am thinking it might be nice with some lime juice and zest instead of lemon and that ginger would add a great little zing. As I experiment, I’ll update here with the variations.

Rhubarb Sorbet (makes about 4 cups)

4 cups sugar

4 cups water

325 grams (11.3 ounces) chopped rhubarb  - I started with just shy of twice as much

4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 

Make the syrup by bringing the sugar and water to a rolling boil. Remove from heat, cool and chill.

Cook the rhubarb with a few drops of water, covered and over low heat. Check often, you don’t want it to burn. As soon as the rhubarb breaks up, remove it from the heat and  puree. You can use a blender or a hand blender or a sieve and spoon if you don’t have either of those. This should yield a little over one cup of puree. Cool.

Mix the puree with 2 cups of the sugar syrup and the lemon juice. Chill until cold.

Chill and freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer to an irtight container and keep in freezer.

Or, put it in a bowl, your mixer bowl if you have a stand mixer, a glass or stainless bowl, if you don’t. Freeze it is partially frozen, maybe an inch or so in all the way around, around an hour.  Quickly remove it from the freezer and mix it with the mixer or whisk for a few seconds until it is all mixed together. Return to the freezer. Repeat freezing and whisking until it is getting firm. This will take a while. Sometimes, depending on your freezer and the temperature of your kitchen and any other number of temperature based variables, it could be as quick as three or four hours. It will be worth it.

This should keep in an airtight container for a couple of weeks, if it lasts that long.

Veggie Burgers That Work

I love a veggie burger. Granted, I have been known to order it with cheese and bacon before, but it still counts in my book. I have had good ones and bad ones, ones that taste like bad hamburgers, which is wrong, and ones that taste like nothing. I have made them, rarely with a recipe, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much.

I borrowed The Golden Door Cooks at Home by Dean Rucker with Marah Stets from the book bus. It reminded me of all the things I used to cook in really nice, hot tropical locales. The recipe for Red Lentil Veggie Burgers with Spicy Yam fries and Mango ‘Ketchup’ sang out for two reasons. The first, I really wanted a burger and the second, I decided I would follow the recipe to the letter. Could I do it?

The thought of veggie burgers made me think of a time, not so long ago, when I was somewhere between three and four months pregnant with Tilly. I really needed to have a veggie burger, I have no idea why. We were living in Alaro in Mallorca and there wasn’t a chance we would be getting one there. I decided that Poppy and I would pick Stephen up from work in Palma and, prepare for shameful confession here, we would go to The Hard Rock Cafe where surely, in a land of amazing and fresh and beautiful food, we would be able to get a veggie burger, maybe even with cheese and bacon. Off we went, and what arrived on my plate, I was pleased to see, was not an imitation beef burger. It appeared to be made of lentils and rice and good things. Then I took a bite and realized that no, it was made of sawdust and Elmer’s glue. I didn’t go back to The Hard Rock Cafe after that, I had learned my lesson and I would stick to the local amazing and fresh and beautiful food offered everywhere else.

Or, I would make the veggie burgers myself. It didn’t happen in Alaro. In fact, it only happened a couple of weeks ago, inspired and spurred on by The Golden Door.

These are really tasty. The have a great texture and a little kick from the curry powder. The veggies give a really nice crunch. You could put them in a bun but that would be pretty heavy. The burgers are really nice with the Thai Slaw, not the dandelion salad in the photo which was good but not as good as Thai Slaw which will be up on here soon, and the mango ‘ketchup’ which is really just a quick fruity salsa.

And, I followed the recipe exactly, almost. I didn’t make the fries. I didn’t have any edamame so I substituted frozen limas. I also substituted cremini mushrooms for shitake which, unsurprisingly, I couldn’t find round these here parts. I doubled the recipe because it is a bit heavy on prep. I froze the extra burgers on a parchment lined baking sheet and then, when they were fully frozen, transferred them to a freezer bag figuring that they would cook well from frozen, which they do. You just need to lengthen the cooking times a bit. The recipe calls for cooking spray which I don’t use so I just used grapeseed oil where it called for that. Other than that, I was so serious about being exact here that I even used measuring cups.

Red Lentil Burgers with Mango ‘Ketchup’ adapted, ever so slightly, from The Golden Door Cooks at Home by Dean Rucker with Marah Stets (makes 8 pretty big burgers)

1/2 cup brown rice and 1 cup water

1 cup red lentils and 2 cups water

1/2 cup finely diced onion (about 1/2 medium)

1 teaspoon minced garlic

1 1/2 cups finely chopped broccoli florets and peeled stems (about 5 ounces, if you care to weigh it out)

1 cup finely chopped carrots (about 2 medium)

2 cups peeled, grated and squeezed to remove excess liquid potatoes

1 cup finely chopped cremini mushrooms 

1/2 cup frozen limas, thawed and finely chopped (about 2 ounces)

1 1/2 teaspoons yellow curry powder

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup cornmeal

Grapeseed oil (or any vegetable oil you use)

Cook and cool the rice and lentils, separately. Cool and transfer to a large mixing bowl.

Saute the onion and garlic with a teaspoon of oil until translucent. Add the vegetables and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are cooked but still crunchy, about 5 minutes. Stir in curry powder and season.

Preheat the oven to 400º.

Mix the vegetables into the rice and lentils.

Using about 1/2 cup of the mixture for each, form into eight patties.

Put the cornmeal on a plate and dredge each of the patties in the cornmeal.

Put 1/2 tablespoon of oil on a skillet and sear the burgers for about 2-3 minutes on each side over medium heat until golden. Transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet and finish in the oven for about 12 minutes.

Serve with Mango ‘ Ketchup.’

Here is where I really have screwed this up. I can not find the notes I made on the ‘ketchup’. I thought I had brought them with me but, unless they have become a piece of  almost four year old’s artwork in the last week, I have lost my mind. I can remember what I put in, because I strayed from the recipe here, but not exactly. So, I am going to tell you roughly, and you can play with it if you want to. Really, it is easy.

Take some mango, I used 2 cups of previously frozen and thawed chunks, if I recall. You can use fresh if you have it. Whizz some of it up in the food processor and chop the rest. Add some finely diced red onion or shallot, some finely diced red pepper or chilli, if your main audience isn't an almost four year old, some lime juice, some salt and pepper and some chopped fresh coriander/cilantro. And, that, I think, is about it.