Tofu Burger with Chard

You know what they say about tofu, that it’s a “blank slate for flavor.” Maybe you haven’t heard that exact phrase, but you’ve no doubt heard reiterations of it. That tofu soaks up the flavors of whatever it is cooked with may be true, but my concern is more often its texture.

When tofu is undercooked and underseasoned—and blitzed in a food processor—it tastes heavy and cloying and in my opinion is basically inedible, the tofu equivalent of wet cardboard or wet newspaper or congealed wallpaper glue. I made many heavy, cloying, wallpaper-glue veggie burgers before I got to this one.

Taking to the Internet

Veggie Burgers Every Which Way won’t be out until this June. In the meantime, I’ve set up a few things for the tech-savvy veggie burger enthusiast among us. If you are so inclined, check out my Twitter feed, and then become a fan of the book on Facebook! Thanks!

Pub-Grub Veggie Burgers

A few weeks ago I ate lunch at Penguin, in Charlotte, NC, and ordered their veggie burger. Wow, I thought, naively, this doesn’t taste much like the other veggie burgers I’ve been eating. It’s so rich and savory and— Something didn’t seem quite right. I asked our server about it. “Let’s see,” she said, “I know it’s a mix of chickpeas and black beans. . .” “Yes,” I said. “Go on.” “And maybe there’s some chili powder in there?” I stared at her skeptically. “And?” “And maybe he puts some cheese in with mixture? But don’t take my word for it.” All this didn’t seem to add up. On my way to the bathroom I peeked into the kitchen and instantly discovered the missing link: a bubbling vat of oil. The veggie burger was deep-fried. Of course.

Black Olive Roasted Potato Salad

Now that I’ve been eating veggie burgers almost every day for three months, in addition to anguishing about them on the subway, and in the shower, and in my dreams, I turned to the “side dishes” section of the cookbook with a great deal of giddiness. You wouldn’t believe how exited I got about potato salad! Yes! Sweet, sweet potato salad!

Armenian Lentil Burger

This burger came to me as an idea from Ani, one of the publisher Matthew’s good friends, whose family hails from Armenia. As I’m not very fluent (read: not fluent at all) in Armenian cooking, she gave me some of the key spices and components of the cuisine, and then the burger just wrote itself. Don’t be dismayed by the laundry list of ingredients because it’s really not complicated—cook the beans with some aromatics, and separately cook the onion with dry spices, blitz everything in a food processor, and fold in the bread crumbs.

One time I made it with my friend Emily, who had the idea to put the mixture through the meat grinder attachment of her Kitchen Aide. With this burger, it really worked! (I don’t know that it would work so well with burgers where one wants a chunkier texture.) We made “sliders” and dipped them in a delicious cucumber-mint yogurt sauce she threw together, but any crispy vegetable compliments the burger on a toasted bun or warm pita: cucumbers, radishes, red onion, romaine lettuce….

Pretzel Roll Preview

If that doesn’t look like a perfect pretzel roll—for one of the heartier burgers like the red lentil-celery root one, or the sweet potato burger with chard, or the mushroom-zucchini burger, or for tearing up into chunks and dipping into a jar of Grey Poupon—then I don’t know what a perfect pretzel roll looks like. This book is shaping up nicely!

But my next book will definitely be called Putting ‘Em On, Taking ‘Em Off: The Diet Plan for Every Cookbook Author.

Whole Wheat Hamburger Buns (in which I adopt the second person)

Do you remember how when you first learned how to make bread—maybe your mother taught you, or someone else’s mom, or you learned it from a Junior League Cookbook—and how when you were young it seemed like such a fun thing at first because you got to play with dough, but by the end of the kneading, kneading, kneading, you wanted to never have to make bread again. Until, that is, your mom got a KitchenAid, and suddenly bread was easy. You just had to dump in some extra flour whenever it clung to the bowl and you could let it knead as long as you wanted. You could watch a whole episode of Murphy Brown while it was kneading.

(Somewhere in there your parents gave you a bread machine for Christmas—I think you were twelve—and that wasn’t as bad as it sounds, except that the bread was mediocre and the little paddle always got stuck in the bottom of the bread, and so one time you threw a molding loaf in the garbage and with it the paddle, and then the bread machine was immediately rendered useless.)

When you worked at a bread bakery in high school and during college summers, they had a saying: “Flour is your friend.” You used so much flour you had dreams about it. No one ever told you to be shy with flour. You’d scoop the flour out of garbage pails and always have a pile of it within reach: for bread, of course, but also for scones and cinnamon rolls and lemon bars and brownies. Nothing couldn’t use a little bit more flour. (I’m exaggerating a little bit.) But then you worked at a restaurant and were responsible for making the breadsticks, and in the method of the baker who trained you, the dry ingredients were fixed; the variable was the liquid. So into the mixer went the yeast and flour and salt and semolina flour, and you’d mix that up, and then you’d add some of the liquid, and then a little more, and then a little more if you needed it. There were no handfuls of flour flung around like fireworks. And when you rolled out the dough to slice it up, you’d dump oil on the countertop—not a frosting-thick layer of flour.

Thai Carrot Burger

This carrot burger has required a lot of tinkering, but I think I’m finally on the right track. The trick was figuring out how to cook the carrots. I tried roasting, boiling, and steaming, all of which required that I puree or mash them, resulting in a mushy, disgusting, babyfood burger. While working on a beet burger I’ll share later, it dawned on me: Grate them up and fry ‘em. This solved the texture problem in a huge way, and also allowed me to cook the seasonings at the same time. In the end, I’d like this recipe to have fresh lemongrass in it, but as I’m down in North Carolina for a little stretch, I haven’t been able to find it anywhere.

I only call for a small amount of peanut butter, but that’s because you want to get the good stuff—the natural, unpasteurized, un-fussed-with kind that is made to order at health food stores where they have a peanut butter machine. If you can’t find that, buy something that is as unadulterated as possible, but you may want to add a bit more.

Spinach-Chickpea Burger

I love the flavor combo of spinach and chickpeas, and aside from the addition of cumin seeds and a squeeze of lemon, this burger tastes cleanly of just that. Inadvertently gluten free—I’m constantly on the hunt for alternatives to bread crumbs, primarily because bread crumbs to me are a wet blanket to flavor but also because, hello, we’ re putting it on a bun—the garbanzo flour only strengthens the flavor and protein power.

Garbanzo flour is found pretty easily at grocery stores in the health foods section, but you can make your own by blitzing the dried beans in a blender or in small batches in a spice grinder and then sifting it. But be warned: it will make a lot of noise.

Tasting Party

I had the first of probably many tasting parties last weekend. Some photos below, recipes to come…

This was an idea Chef Pascal, the French chef at the restaurant where I work, came up with: a “beet tartare” burger, which kicked things off. It looks a little strange and will require some tinkering, but–good!! That’s some goat cheese, shallot, and terragon on top.

Next up was a gluten-free spinach & chickpea burger that is pretty amazing. It was the unanimous favorite. I defeated the gluten-freeness by putting on a brioche bun.

The tofu burger has been my cross to bear for a month now. This is the closest I’ve come to one that I like, a vegan honey-sesame glazed bok choy & tofu burger that has all kinds of good things going on. The flavor is awesome and texture is good, though I still need to firm it up. This is such a challenge because adding anything like flour or bread crumbs tends to greatly compromise the flavor. At this point we were tired of buns because we had the curried eggplant burger before this one (which for several reasons—not least among them the fact that we were drinking wine—didn’t get pictured).