The first part of the meal was the main event - the BURGERS! I've eaten plain burgers for way too long, so lately, I've gotten into playing around with different types of burgers and throwing lots of different flavors into my burgers. This one is up there as one of the better burgers that I've tried to create. What I envisioned with this one was the flavor of sausage - lots of fennel and garlic and some good spice. Here's how I pulled it together:
Spicy Sausage Burgers
1.5 lbs of lean ground beef (I used 93% lean)
1 T fennel seed
1 T cumin seed
1 or 2 tsp red pepper flakes (to taste)
2 cloves of garlic, grated with a hand held grater
1/4 cup grated pecorino romano cheese
1 T tomato paste
2 T extra virgin olive oil (since I used such a lean meat, I like how the olive oil keeps it moist and gives it a light flavor)
1 tsp Frank's red hot sauce (or more if you like - I just gave it a few shakes)
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Take the fennel seed, cumin seed and red pepper flakes and grind them finely in a spice grinder. Throw the meat into a large bowl and then add the rest of the ingredients, including the freshly ground spices. Then, use the world's best kitchen utensils - your hands - and mix all of the ingredients together until the spices, cheese, garlic, tomato paste and sauces are spread evenly throughout the mixture. Flatten the mixture in the bottom of the bowl and score the meat with your hand to that you can make even sized burgers. I made 3, but you could probably use this amount of meat for 4 smaller burgers. Form your burgers and set aside for grilling. A good tip when forming burgers - press down in the center with your thumb so that when the middle expands when cooking, they'll be perfectly round when they are done cooking. Now, sadly, this is the only picture that I got of the burgers, before they went on the grill. We ate them too fast when they were done. No time for pictures. Sorry. Deal with it.
The next part was a bit of an experiment in baking GF rolls. I used a recipe from one of my favorite GF cookbooks - You Won't Believe it's Gluten Free, by Roben Ryberg. These rolls are made with a blend of potato starch and sorghum flour. I divided the dough evenly between these three mini springform pans that I had, since the dough is not firm enough to hold it's shape on its own. However, these pans were a little too big and the bread ended up baking very thin. I probably could have made just two, but that's a lesson learned. We carefully split them in half for the burgers (with one getting ruined in the process - the innocent casualty was gobbled up while it was still warm). Yum. These rolls are really good and they have a pretzel like taste. Anytime you bake with over 75% potato starch, the result is a very gummy consistency when it's warm. But I kinda liked how chewy they were. They cooled slightly while the burgers cooked, so I toasted them lightly before eating the burgers.
And the last part of our fantastic Friday meal was Stefan's sweet potato spears. I didn't watch every step of the way, but he cut the potatoes into spears (as you'll see in the picture below) and seasoned them with salt, pepper and olive oil. First he roasted them in a roasting pan for a while at about 375-400°. For the last 10 minutes or so, he put them onto a cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet, and placed them back in the oven so the hot air could wrap around them and crisp them up. He also added some chopped fresh herbs from the garden - a combination of oregano, marjoram and parsley.
And that was our Friday night meal... Since we had the day off, we started early with some happy hour cocktails and continued with some red wine sangria through dinner. I can't think of anything better on a beautiful summer night. Enjoy!
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