"Needs salt," my husband said. I had just created my first "animal" burger recipe for my Dream Diner — Burger Number Seven and given him the resulting burger to taste. But I forgot to add the miso to the recipe, thus the reason for his comment. To make up for the needed salt, I also served him some delicious lemon miso sauce from Julia Ferre's recipe for "Lemon Fennel" in a recent issue of "Macrobiotics Today." And then he liked the burger. He said it was good, and that he could taste the turkey. (I had tasted a tiny tiny bit of it from the pan and it tasted strong to me.)
Now I'm wondering if next time I should add miso to the lentils at the end of cooking as I had intended? Or, since I had used a little salt when I cooked the lentils, the squash, and the onions, maybe it would be better to give the customer the option of adding more salt by way of a miso sauce instead? Something to think about...
Anyway, since I started with only a half-pound of ground turkey, I was surprised that it came out to three good-sized patties. I think he was too. One half of a pound of ground turkey is equal to 1 cup, not 1 and 1/2 cups like I was guessing, and so I changed all the amounts in order to keep the same percentages that correspond to George Ohsawa's Macrobiotic Diet #-3.
Here's the final recipe:
1 cup organic ground turkey from Diestel Family Turkey Ranch [30% meat]
1/2 cup cooked onions (nitsuke style)
1/2 cup cooked mashed Hokkaido squash (a.k.a. kabocha or sweet Japanese pumpkin) [onions + squash = 30% vegetables]
1/3 cup cooked brown basmati rice [10% whole grains]
1/3 cup cooked lentils with kombu [10% "soup"]
1/2 cup ground, lightly toasted walnuts [15% nuts]
3 Tbsps. apple, tiny dices fried in sesame oil with slightly burnt edges [5% "dessert"]
plus olive oil (organic, extra virgin olive oil from California) for frying and 2 Tbsps. whole wheat flour for dredging
I placed all the ingredients, except the oil and the flour, in a large glass bowl, mixed them well together with my hands, and shaped the mixture into three round patties, being careful to not compact them too tightly. (I must remember to bring everything up to room temperature first because the ground turkey was still cold from the refrigerator and that made it harder for everything to stick together.)
The patties were quite soft but still manageable — they stayed together — and I gently dabbed each one in a plate of flour before setting them into my prepared frying pan on the stove, which I had already added the olive oil to and preheated. By having the pan and oil already hot, it helped to quickly form a crust on the outside of the patties, and thus keep their shape.
In the end, the recipe was a success, at least as far as my Taste-Tester was concerned. I asked him if he had any ideas for a name and he said "How about Turkey Plus?" Not bad! And so here's the first burger for my dream diner, Burger Number Seven.
"I'll have a Turkey Plus, please!"
Notes:
Julia Ferre's recipe for Lemon Fennel can be found in a printed copy or PDF download of the March/April 2011 issue of "Macrobiotics Today," available at the George Ohsawa Macrobiotic Foundation website.
Related Blog Articles:
Organic Turkey Burger #-3
6. Ten Recipes To Health And Happiness — Burger Number
Seven's Special Burgers
My Dream Diner
