Chipotle Veggie Burger

Here is the best, IMHO, recipe of veggie burger for my fellow vegetarians. With a real chipotle pepper, quinoa, beans and corn, it is full of flavors, healthy alternative to your regular burger! Who knows, it may convince you to quit eating meat .. ;)

Blog's Category: My Own Fast and Easy, Vegetarian

Intro

I really like my Black Bean burgers from Costco. Really. I like them very much. Even my carnivorous husband accepts them as a temporary substitute for a meat entree. That's why when I decided to use leftovers of cooked red quinoa for a quick homemade veggie burgers, the level of expectation was already pretty high. I needed my burgers be better than Costco's.. Otherwise, why bother, right?

Guess what.. I've got it! My burgers turned out great, and my biggest and the most trusted tester, my son, approved it and rated with a biggest score possible :).

Some of the most rare ingredients such as "chipotle in adobo sauce" or red quinoa can be substituted or omited, but in general, the recipe is easy and relatively quick. 

For a small can "Chipotle in Adobo", look in an international, most likely Mexican, section of your grocery story. 


What is it?

This veggie burgers is a healthiest mix of vegetable proteins, beans and quinoa, with corn. Flavor boosters are granulated garlic, granulated onion and chipotle pepper. Binding agents are eggs (optional), corn flour and flour.

Taste Description

Chipotle pepper gives a great deal of smoky and spicy flavor to this really delicious burgers. Not overly but rather pleasantly sweet beats of corn add another dimension to a rustic taste of beans and quinoa. Texture deserves praise on its own - quinoa gives an outer crust awesome crispy crunchiness, while keeps inner texture rich and toothy; half-smashed beans are creamy and chewy at the same time and whole corn kernels like a bits of jewel here and there.

How to Serve/Store

Cook all your burgers - they can be kept in a fridge for a week or so. Note that it's better to re-heat leftover burgers in a toaster-oven or in a skillet with a tiny splash of olive oil to recreate that magnificent crispy outer skin.

Serve burger on a burger bun or, as below, on a toasted bagel, smudged with mayo (mixed with a splash of sriracha chile sauce), add some sweet onion feathers and cilantro leaves. Regular burger add-ons are welcomed - tomato slice, pickles, avocado wedges, etc.

I also built go-to wraps, stuffing cold burgers, split in half, next to the long slices of mozzarella, inside of flour tortilla, with some cilantro leaves, for a perfect lunch.

Chipotle Veggie Burger 

For a generous batch of about 15 burgers:

• 1 lb dry pinto beans, cooked (or 3-4 cans of canned beans, drained thoroughly)
• 1/2 lb red quinoa, cooked 
• 1 pack of frozen corn ( about 3 cups)
• 1/2 small can of Chipotle in Adobo, blended with immersion blender
• 1 tbs granulated garlic 
• 1 tbs granulated onion
• 1 tsp salt (use less if using canned beans)
• 2 eggs 
• 3 tbs all-purpose flour
• 2 tbs corn flour

- In your largest mixing bowl, roughly mash beans with a potato masher leaving some beans whole, some smashing into a paste. Add remaining ingredients and mix everything thoroughly. 

- As a pilot run, I like to cook tiny 1" patty first, in a microwave, to figure out if seasoning is right on. Do it also to get your perfect burger! Make adjustments if needed.

- To shape burger, take a generous amount of mix and, with your palms, form, first, round ball, then smash it gently into a patty about 3/4" thick.

- Cook on a preheated to a medium-hot skillet, in a generous amount of olive oil, on both sides, to the golden brown crust. 

- Enjoy!



Notes

- If you can't find Chipotle in Adobo, try to use generous amount of a smoked paprika in a combination with a ground black pepper. 

- Regular quinoa can be used instead of red.

- Adding corn flour to a mix, supposedly, makes crust crunchier. But if you don't have it replace with a same amount of all-purpose flour. The same applies if you, vise versa, don't have regular flour but have a corn flour (or rice flour) on hands. Purely intuitively, I think that combination of regular flour and corn flour is ideal, though :)

- Omit eggs if you don't eat them. "Structural integrity" of your burger may be compromised, but not drastically, I think.



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IN PICTURES

Here is my mashed beans. For convenience, you can use canned beans.. I just had some low-grade dry pinto beans that I could use only as mashed..

Let your burgers to get a good crust underneath before turning them over. Otherwise you are risking to break them in half. If you fill they done't hold well enough. Add some more flour or corn flour into your remaining mixture.

That is my favorite flipping tool - small (it looks big on this picture) spatula, metal flipping part is very thin and slides easily under the patty..

mnyam (it's yum in russian :))

Thai Coconut Soup

Delicious soup with a true Thai flavors of coconut, lime and lemongrass, loaded with different proteins. It is a real treat to your health and soul.

Blog's Category: International, Vegetarian, Soup

Intro

I was about to write down tacky "Thai is one of my..." and caught myself on a thought that I like all cuisines, the world's food diversity is one of the privileges I'm lucky to enjoy. No, I'm not traveling for this around the world (although I wish I could). But I cook. Having an internet as my recipe book and abundance of ethnic grocery stores around, I've got all tools on hand :)

Thai Coconut Soup was on my list for a while and finally it got on my family dinner table. As usually, after some research on a subject, I ended up with a recipe that deserves to be on my permanent family menu. I modified original recipe replacing chicken stock with a bonito stock granules, kicked up protein content adding tofu, shrimp and mushrooms all together. 

My son Danny loved the soup, as well as my hubby who is not a person easily pleased with exotic food. As a bonus - soup is easy and fast to cook!


What is it?

This soup is based on a coconut milk and infused with lemongrass, ginger, red curry paste, fish sauce. Proteins are shitake mushrooms, shrimp and tofu. Garnished with cilantro leaves and lime.

Taste Description

It has distinctive South-East Asian flavors of coconut and lemongrass, complex bouquet of red curry with a gentle kick of spiciness. Perfectly accompanying cilantro leaves and lime, add final touch to a layered flavors of this soup. Diverse proteins - shitake, tofu and shrimp, soak up all these flavors and bring them to your taste buds as ultimate meal experience.

How to Serve/Store

Serve hot. It keeps in a fridge for about 4-5 days and reheats in a microwave nicely.

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Thai Coconut Soup 

For about 5-quart pot:

• 1.5 tbs fresh grated ginger
• 2 tbs red curry paste (for a mildly spiced, add more if you like it spicy)
• 3 tbs cooking olive oil (or any vegetable oil of your choice)
• 2 stalks of lemongrass, only lower part (about 6"), very finely sliced
• 5 cups of tap water
• salt to taste (about 1 tsp)
• 3 tbs fish sauce
• 2 cans of coconut milk
• 2 tsp fish stock granules - optional (or 5 cups chicken or vegetable broth)
• 1 lime, juice only
• 4 tbs brown sugar
• 1 lb shitake mushrooms, cups only, sliced
• 1.5 lb fresh or frozen shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 2 packs of firm tofu, diced into bite size pieces
• lime wedges (to serve with)
• fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped (for garnishing)

- In a large pot, cook first 4 ingredients (through lemongrass), on a medium heat, for about 2 minutes, stirring.

- Add next 7 ingredients (through brown sugar). 

- Bring broth to a boil, then add shitake, tofu and shrimp. Bring it to a boil, switch to a lowest heat and let it simmer for 5 minutes while you adjust the taste - add some boiling water if broth is too concentrated, or add salt or fish sauce or fish stock granules if needed.

- Take from a heat. Serve with a lime wedge and cilantro and enjoy! 



Notes


- If you think you won't like tiny, but tough pieces of lemongrass in your stock, you have two choices. First one - before adding shitake, tofu and shrimp, strain your stock to get rid of lemongrass particles. Second choice - do not slice lemongrass, pound it with a mallet and add whole stalks to a broth. Do not forget to fish them out before serving. 



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IN PICTURES

Discard lower tough ends of lemongrass (root part) and upper ends.

Remaining parts, slice them in a half along the stalk, then slice thinly. My son didn't like those tough specks in a soup, although it didn't stay on a his way of enjoying this soup a lot. Next time, I probably will use whole stalks, pounded a little, to infuse the stock.

Hon dashi, or fish stock granules, or bonito granules. I buy at Asian groceries and use it for my miso soup and as here, for coconut soup. It is fast and convenient way to add umami flavor to a stock.

Shitake stems are not edible, although they can be used for vegetable stocks.

Shitake, shrimp and tofu can be added at the same time as their cooking time is practically the same.

My Curry Leaf Spice Mix

It's about curry leaf, one of the staple ingredient of South Indian cuisine. Once you get familiar with this aromatic leaves, you are never going to stop loving it. Here is one of the simplest spice mixes based on a key ingredient - curry leaf.

Blog's Category: My Own Fast and Easy, Vegetarian

Intro

This my own curry leaf spice mix is inspired by Indian spice mixes (sometimes called Podi, or Gun Powder) which includes fresh curry leaves. I made this kind of spice mixes numerous times and got somewhat familiar with them to the point I can make my own recipes. This time I made spice which are simple but irresistible. Try it, and I promise you will love it.

The hardest part is finding a place where you can buy fresh curry leaves. Fortunately, I have several Indian grocery stores around where I can buy small pouches with a fresh curry leaves (OMG, stick your nose into this small pouch and close your eyes...mmmm!).


What is it?

Dry-toasted curry leaves, some kind of dry hot pepper (szechuan in my recipe), some coriander, fenugreek seeds and bay leave are all what you need! Grind them and get spice mix with mind blowing, addictive aroma.

Taste Description

Spice has, of course, strong fruity flavor of curry leaf, heat from pepper and layered undertones of bay leaf, coriander and fenugreek. 

How to Serve/Store

Store in airtight container. Just small dash is enough to flavor virtually anything you like - rice, bowl of soup or your homemade pita ships. Try to make dip combining this spice mix with mayo and/or sour cream.
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Curry Leaf Spice Mix 

For about 2 cups of topping:

• 3-4 stems of fresh curry leaves (about  40 leaves), stripped from a stem
• 2 tbs coriander seeds (or use already ground coriander)
• 1-2 tbs fenugreek seeds
• 2 tbs dry szechuan pepper (or 1 -2 small dry red chilies)
• 1 bay leaf

- On a dry skillet, on a low heat, toast all ingredients, stirring, until curry leaves are crispy-dry and coriander seeds are lightly toasted. It can take up to 20 minutes.

- Let it cool down, then grind to medium course.

- Keep spice mix in a airtight container.

- Enjoy!



Notes

- To speed up cooling of toasted ingredients, transfer them from a skillet onto the plate.



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IN PICTURES

Compare curry leaves on this and a previous photo. Here, they are dry and break when folded in half. Coriander seeds are golden versus greenish (on the upper photo). That means toasting is done!

It's really hard to keep your nose away from this aromatic mix.

Blog-checking lines: For the month of April, Sawsan from Chef in disguise challenged us to spice things up by making our own spice blends from scratch

Coconut Savory Topping

Do you like coconut flavor? Then this is for you - make your own, very coconutty, savory topping that you can sprinkle virtually on any dish, whenever craving for coconut will hit you :)

Blog's Category: My Own Fast and Easy, Vegetarian

Intro

I can explain my unconditional love to coconut by the fact that, in a childhood, coconut was for me such an exotic fruit! My world has changed, and it is not that exotic for me anymore. I even perfected in my "relationships" with a coconut - I can properly crack coconut with my chef knife, be it mature hard-core nut to retrieve a flash or a young coconut, full of refreshing coconut water, with a tender layer of coconut meat. 

Some day I will make separate posts about it. Not today. Today it's all about having your coconut flavor at your finger tips whenever you feel a need for it!

Coconut fix is easy - it's coconut based spice mix. This recipe is so easy!


What is it?

Dry-toasted lime zest and toasted coconut are mixed with some salt, ground coriander, granulated garlic and chili pepper.

Taste Description

Coconut and lime zest give this spicy mix distinct Thai flavor. Regulate spiciness level with a right quantity of chili pepper. Granulated garlic adds another layer of goodness, distinct coriander flavor adds complexity to this rather simple but such a flavorful mix. 

How to Serve/Store

The best part is that this spice mix can be kept for a long time. Use it as a table condiment - just grab some and sprinkle on a top of any rice or pasta dish, or on your salad for some additional crunch and flavor, or even on a piece of buttered bread as a simple snack or breakfast.
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Coconut Savory Topping 

For about 2 cups of topping:

• 2 cups dried unsweetened coconut flakes
• 2 tbs coriander seeds (or use already ground coriander)
• 1 tbs granulated garlic
• 2-3 limes (zest only)
• 1/2 tsp salt 
• 1 tbs chili flakes (for a mildly spicy mix)

- On a dry skillet, on a medium-low heat, cook lime zest, stirring constantly, until it dries out completely. Set aside and let it cool.

- Similarly, dry-toast coriander and coconut flakes until coconut flakes become light-beige. Set aside and cool down.

- Combine all ingredients together and blend them briefly in a processor.

- Keep spice mix in a airtight container.

- Enjoy!



Notes

- To speed up cooling down toasted coconut flakes, coriander and lemon zest, transfer them from a skillet onto the plate.

- Try to toast lime zest, coriander and coconut flakes, all together on a same skillet. Just make sure that lime zest dries out completely and coconut flakes toast.



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IN PICTURES

Blog-checking lines: For the month of April, Sawsan from Chef in disguise challenged us to spice things up by making our own spice blends from scratch