This week's recipe is actually very similar to a dish Victor often makes, kebab & naan. But, he left me to my challenge and I got to do it my way.
I tried a trick for juicy meatballs from
Michael Smith's spaghetti & meatball recipe from Chef at Home: I started with some bread crumbs (crumbled from one end slice of a whole wheat loaf) and added some milk. Victor usually doesn't do this step but I've been curious whether it really works. (I'll answer this question later.) Then I added all the seasoning (not really sure how much... but I think it was a LOT) and stirred in the beef. I also added an egg to help bind it all together.
Time for the trusty grill pan again.
In the meantime, Victor made his usual naan. It's just a simple white bread recipe, rolled out into flat pieces and grilled until it puffs up. He uses the pasta roller attachment on our KitchenAid mixer.
I made sort of a taco sandwich with the naan and served it with microwave steamed corn on the cob.
The mint in the cucumber salad totally made this dish for me. Between this and the
Week 2 recipe, I've really developed an appreciation for fresh mint in cooking. I let the cucumber salad sit for so long that the cucumbers turned into pickles in the dressing. But that made it more awesome. Oh, I also used Miracle Whip in place of mayonnaise and added some lime juice.
I have to say - cucumbers aren't my favourite, but they were perfect with these burgers. And I'm not a big fan of foods in sandwich form, but with the thin naan, these sandwiches had a more than acceptable bread : stuff ratio.
I'm not sure how much seasoning I used but I'm pretty sure it was at least twice as much as the recipe called for. We like our meat well seasoned. Since I didn't measure, I felt that I made it a little unbalanced (too much cumin maybe), but Victor thought it was perfect. To each his own!
And the bread crumbs & milk trick? AMAZING. These were the juiciest burgers I've had in a long time.
Hooray for leftovers for lunch!
I have to tell you that I was sick as a dog when I made these, so my recollection of the process and the pictures are not the best this week. Hopefully, I will be back on my game next week.
I used ground turkey, since I don't eat beef. I made the mix into eight burgers about two inches in diameter and that was the perfect size to get two into the pita. I don't think I could have made 16 burgers, they would have been the size of a quarter. The mini-burgers were very flavorful. I didn't eat mine in a pita (again, I blame being sick), but here is a picture of J's sandwich before he demolished it.
