spiced turkey burgers.

i pregamed for memorial day weekend.... no, not with alcohol, but with burgers. turkey burgers, to be specific. since a lot of my friends don't eat pork or beef i've had to become more well-versed in the ways of the poultry. if you read my previous recipe for turkey burgers with cranberry chutney, this isn't too different. but now there are pictures, bwahaha.

SPICED TURKEY BURGERS
- ground turkey
- Goya Adobo
- Mrs. Dash
- black pepper (i really like fresh ground black peppercorns or coarse ground pepper, but you can use regular pepper)
- red chili pepper flakes
- hoisin sauce (again, up to you)
- chopped red or yellow onion
- diced garlic
- Goya Sazon

mix everything by hand. yes, by hand. besides giving you a good feel for everything being mixed together, you'll also save some utensils from getting dirtied up.




once it's all good and mixed, grab up a wad, shape it into burger, and fry in hot canola oil. you could do this on a grill if you're concerned about health, but honestly, if you use very hot oil and transfer your finished burgers directly to a paper towel to soak up the excess oil, then you should be fine.





the burgers take roughly three minutes on each side, depending on how large you make them, but you should be able to see the "doneness" creeping up the side of the patty. you're going for a deep brown on each side, not black (of course).




when they're done, transfer to a paper towel and wait for them to cool. from here, you can eat them just about anyway you'd like to. buns are optional. you don't really need to dress it with onions since there are onions in the burgers themselves.





this was how i dressed mine that day -- a patty on between two slices of lightly toasted whole wheat bread with slices of tomato, arugula, and a little drizzle of honey for sweetness.


- generation eat.

cream cheese pancakes, take one.

after i had the cream cheese pancakes at IHOP, i kinda wanted them again. but, since eating at IHOP a bunch of times isn't exactly in my budget, i had to sit down and figure out how to make them. so this was attempt number one.



started out, of course, by making my pancake batter... whole wheat flour, eggs, whole milk (a present to myself in this lactose-free household), oil, baking powder, and sugar. stirred it up. then i brought in the cream cheese.




cream cheese by itself is.... okay. so, i mixed my whipped cream cheese with vanilla extract, sugar, and butter, blended it nice, then folded it into my batter.

overall, it came out good, but as far as flavor goes, there was no real difference. they might as well have been regular pancakes. i'm thinking of mixing the cream cheese the night before, chilling it, then putting it into the batter in cubes or chunks so that you can taste the cream cheese rather than it just being blended into the mix. or better yet, a cream cheese center.


- generation eat.

pancakes and breaking things.

i like pancakes. a lot. like, a LOT. this is for two reasons:

1) when i was younger and lived in the Bronx with my mother, she usually made pancakes on weekends (if not, she made french toast). because she hated letting eggs sit in the garbage, after she mixed the batter, she would take the garbage out, leaving me to quickly try to gorge myself on as much delicious pancake batter as i possibly could that wouldn't make me sick and that she wouldn't noticed. i'm very sure she noticed. i'm pretty sure i got whooped once or twice for doing it.

2) when my father came home when i was nine years old and got his job, he used to take me and mom out to lunch and dinner a lot. we used to frequent an IHOP out in the Bronx and we went there so much that the waiter used to know our order. lots of good memories there.


so when i get the chance to make pancakes or eat pancakes, i usually go for it. i also usually end up making/picking up more than i can eat (exception: IHOP's cream cheese pancakes. SO GOOD. must learn how to make them).

when i got back to new york about ten days ago, i wanted pancakes. BAD. but i didn't feel like buying pancake mix because i knew i wouldn't use it all and then it would sit there and i'd be stuck thinking about what else i could buy with that $4 i wasted. so, i went to Google and clicked though a couple of recipes for pancakes from scratch, only to find that all i needed was some flour and baking powder and i'd be set. even better, we ACTUALLY had baking powder. so, i got up before noon and went out to buy syrup, then came back, ready to make my pancakes. one problem.

we didn't have flour.

well, we had flour, but it was wheat flour and i was sure that it tasted horrid. so i threw a fit and slammed the drawer with the potholders. the drawer fell off. as in, it broke off. that, of course, prompted a freakout that lasted 20 minutes and was solved by me tracking down the wood glue and pasting the drawer back together. the moral? wheat pancakes are just as good and do not break drawers.



(yes, these are the pancakes i made. i TwitPic'd them.)

WHOLE WHEAT PANCAKES

- whole wheat flour
- oil (i like canola)
- sugar
- brown sugar (this is optional, but i think it gives it depth)
- baking powder
- eggs
- milk (i used Lactaid with the pancakes pictured above, which i'm not amazingly fond of. i'd really prefer to use evaporated milk or half and half or just plain whole milk, but i come from a long line of lactose-intolerant people, so we had Lactaid)

start with a really big bowl and put the flour in it. the amount of flour should depend on how many people you're cooking for, but it's up to you. you could probably store the excess in a bottle. anyway, add the baking powder and the sugars, but not TOO much sugar. too much sugar leads to burning if you're not careful. besides, you're not looking to make the pancakes dessert-sweet. add the oil, eggs, and milk and stir. now, Daniel told me once that our friend Candy stirs her pancakes like 5 times and then lets it sit and that she makes the fluffiest pancakes in the whole world. i tried it and it sorta works. i think Candy just makes better pancakes than i do. anyway, put a pan over medium heat, let it warm up, add some oil (i like canola, again) and let that get all hot and whatnot. i like making half-sized pancakes because i can make 3 or 4 at a time and then dip them into syrup rather than cutting them up. flip with the surface of your pancake bubbles. if the pancakes burn before they're done (meaning, the underside turns black, but the pancakes aren't cooked through), then you probably need to thin out the batter with some milk.

oh, this makes good corn cakes, too. add jiffy mix or just some cornmeal to the batter, but let it rest for about ten minutes so that it won't be a complete crunchfest.


- generation eat.

turkey burgers + cranberry chutney

before i went to sleep last night, i went freezer raiding and happened upon some frozen ground turkey. super excitement, especially since most of my cooking lately has been partially prepared (this includes my pillsbury cinnamon roll binge... delicious, but really, it's a set it and forget it thing, so there's no fun past eating them). so, naturally, i thought turkey burgers. cranberry chutney was an offshoot of an idea about cooking some cranberries into the turkey burger... but if i didn't like it, thn i'd just be stuck with some nasty turkey burgers.

so, i did my normal google searches for recipes, trying to see what they all had in common and came up with a rough idea of what to make. out of 10, i'd give it an overall score of maybe... 8.5. it was delicious, but it could be better. probably need fresh cranberries.

TURKEY BURGERS:
- ground turkey
- Goya Adobo seasoning
- Mrs. Dash
- Goya Sazon seasoning
- one small yellow onion, chopped
- chopped garlic (fresh is always great, but we keep a giant jar of the stuff in my house)
- hoisin sauce (optional, but it gives the burgers great flavor and added juiciness)

mix up everything by hand. shape into burgers. size is up to you. fry in canola oil or vegetable oil or corn oil or whatever oil you personally like for making burgers.


CRANBERRY CHUTNEY:
- dried cranberries (i used about three handfuls and it made probably 5 or 6 healthy servings)
- water
- sugar (i used Sugar in the Raw, but white sugar is fine, too, and melts faster)
- vinegar (i used white vinegar, gives the whole thing good bite)
- dried red chili pepper flakes (the heat is great)
- ground cinnamon
- ground nutmeg
- ground allspice

start by boiling the water over medium-high heat, then add the sugar. when all the sugar is melted, add the cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice. stir. add the vinegar. stir again. dump in the cranberries. stir again. add the chili flakes. stir stir stir. then let it all cook down. you can go do other things while you wait for it to cook down -- i made my cinnamon rolls and mixed up the burgers. you want almost all of the water to be gone and to have a pot of cranberries, chili flake pieces, and syrup. chutney is supposed to be thick and sticky and whatnot, as far as i can tell, so that's what you want... around the consistency of chunky jelly. if you run your spoon across the bottom of the pot and it doesn't disappear immediately, you're good. then dump it out into a bowl and put it someplace until you're ready to use it. i suggest using warm since everything else will be warm, too.

toast any bread/buns before using, too, 'cause i'm about 95% sure that the chutney will make them soggy if you don't.

- generation eat

the beginning.

my grandfather, Stanley, was a caterer. every time i went to his house up on 5th avenue, it never failed that i was in awe of his kitchen. it was self-contained. it was worn. it had an old radio, a magnetized strip on the wall to hold the knives, and a giant metal cold-cut slicer in the corner next to the fridge. i was in love.

however, i was also six, so i was usually told to stay out of the kitchen. sad day for little me.

when i got older, cooking and kitchens became one of my fascinations. i could think of no other artform as universal, long-lasting, all encompassing, and just... well, great. it was painting on the tongue.

prior to enrolling in college, i thought that my cooking would become my cash cow. i'd heard plenty of stories about how horrible college food was and i thought that my minor skills in the kitchen would help me make a profit. turns out that i went to a college with some of the best food among American campuses. go figure. but all was not lost -- instead, i found a community of people who not only loved to cook, but loved to eat. yeah, the food on campus was good, but variety was something that people constantly complained about.

so, sophomore year, i got a cookware set from Macy's and started seeing what i could make.

since then (i'm about to start my senior year), i've started believing that mantra from Ratatouille, anyone can cook, but it's more like... anyone can cook anything as long as they try. trust me, i never thought that i'd know how to make pancakes from scratch or tender barbecue ribs or okra gumbo, but somehow, these are all recipes that i trust. can i repeat them to you exactly? .... probably not successfully. but i'm learning that it's less about exact measures (in SOME cases... sometimes, a mis-measurement can be disastrous) and more about cooking with your tongue, brain, and heart. corny, yes. effective, yes. this will be where i talk out new recipes, record dinner parties i've hosted, and catalog all the do's, dont's, and new discoveries i make, and keep track of anything new i've made.

welcome to generation eat.