Quinoa and Greens Burger — Recipes for Health

I wanted to work on veggie burgers because I have never had a commercial one that I liked. They all taste overprocessed to me, with no fresh flavors. I’ve had much better luck making burgers from Lukas Volger’s excellent cookbook “Veggie Burgers Every Which Way.” I especially like his bean and vegetable combos.

Puréed beans make a great binder for grain and vegetable burgers, and an egg added to the mixture will help to hold it together. (If you want to keep them vegan you can, though you have to be careful when you flip the burgers over because they tend to fall apart.) I found that all of these burgers somehow tasted better a day after they were assembled ? the flavors had gelled, the burgers held together better, and a burger that seemed a bit dry to me right after cooking did not seem so dry the next day when reheated. I can’t tell you why.

Like Mr. Volger, I found the best way to cook these vegetarian burgers was to brown them on one side in an ovenproof frying pan, then turn them and stick the pan in a 375-degree oven for 10 minutes. Turning can be tricky, but if the burgers do crumble, just patch them back together with your spatula, apply a little pressure and put the pan into the oven.

I find that the burgers stand alone just fine, but a little ketchup or relish can be nice, especially if you are used to the juiciness of a meat burger. Buns, of course, will add a significant number of calories and carbs, but that’s how my son enjoyed his, with the works.

Quinoa and Greens Burger

I used rainbow quinoa and beet greens for this. I like the rainbow quinoa because it’s pretty and because the red, black and golden quinoa grains all have slightly different textures.

1 bunch beet greens, stemmed and washed (1/2 to 3/4 pound)

2 cups cooked quinoa, preferably rainbow quinoa

2 to 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, as needed

2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger

2/3 cup finely chopped carrot

2/3 cup finely chopped onion

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon cumin seeds, lightly toasted and crushed in a mortar and pestle or spice mill

2 garlic cloves

1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 to 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (to taste)

1 egg (optional)

Freshly ground pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Either steam the beet greens for 2 minutes above 1 inch boiling water, or blanch in salted boiling water for 1 minute. Transfer to a bowl of cold water, drain, squeeze out excess water, and chop medium-fine. Place in a large bowl with the cooked quinoa.

2. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium heat in a heavy skillet and add the onion and carrot. Cook, stirring often, until vegetables are just about tender, about 3 minutes, and add the ginger and a pinch of salt. Cook for another 3 minutes or so, until the vegetables are tender and fragrant, and add the cumin and the garlic. Cook, stirring, for another minute, and remove from the heat. Stir into the quinoa mixture.

3. In a food processor fitted with the steel blade, or in a bowl using a fork or a potato masher, purée the chickpeas with the lemon juice and, if using, the egg. Add to the quinoa mixture and stir everything together. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

4. Begin heating a heavy ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Seasoned cast iron is good, and so is a heavy nonstick pan that can go into the oven. Moisten your hands lightly and shape 4 large or 6 smaller patties. Add the remaining tablespoon of oil to the pan and, working in batches if necessary, cook the patties for 1 to 2 minutes on one side, until nicely browned. Carefully turn the patties over and place the pan in the oven. Bake 10 to 15 minutes, until the patties are lightly browned; if they fall apart you can patch them together with some pressure from the spatula. Remove from the heat and serve, with or without buns, ketchup and the works.

Yield: 4 to 6 burgers.

Advance preparation: These can be put together and shaped up to 3 days before browning. They can also be cooked ahead and reheated in a low oven or in a pan on the stove. Keep them well wrapped in the refrigerator.

Nutritional information per serving (4 servings): 273 calories; 10 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 6 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 38 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams dietary fiber; 548 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 10 grams protein

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 2, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of the author of “Veggie Burgers Every Which Way.” He is Lukas Volger, not Luke.

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Prime Burger, Where the '60s Were a Side Order, to Close

If you’re a fan of Prime Burger at 5 East 51st Street — and that would put you in the company of approximately half of New York, to judge from Friday’s lunchtime crowd — you should come Saturday for a burger and curly fries in your booth for one. You may never again have the chance.

How the city looks and feels — and why it got that way.

Prime Burger, the 74-year-old coffee shop and restaurant, run for 36 years by the DiMiceli family, is closing. And though Michael DiMiceli spoke hopefully on Friday of finding a new space in which to reinstall Prime Burger’s futuristic “Jetsons”-era décor, the family has scarcely had time yet to look or to strike a deal. The small building in which Prime Burger is a tenant was sold recently, and the new owners sent the restaurant packing.

Though the family plans to salvage as many fixtures as it can, Mr. DiMiceli said he despaired of being able to rescue and reconstruct the built-in, one-person booths. In this highly unusual — if not downright eccentric — serving arrangement, customers sit in small U-shaped bays behind individual table tops that pivot shut to enclose them, almost as if they were buckled into an old amusement park ride. (The thrill lies in the calorie count.)

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

The problem is that these booths may have been too well installed to allow removal. “We’d like to take the seats,” Mr. DiMiceli said, “but the guys I talked to said that taking them apart would probably destroy them.”

There is also a long traditional lunch counter in the front, and tables and chairs in the back. Waiters still wear white jackets. Some count their service in the decades. Mr. DiMiceli, 57, runs the business with his 53-year-old brother, John. Their father, Anthony, now 84, bought Prime Burger in 1976, when Michael was graduating from college. “I had a little talk with my father and jumped right in,” he recalled.

All that experience was on display Friday as Mr. DiMiceli worked the check-out counter. From his left came a steady stream of diners to pay their bills, drop off business cards and buy souvenir T-shirts. On his right, longtime customers dropped by to confirm with him that the sad news was true. In between stood this reporter, lobbing questions that Mr. DiMiceli answered as kindly as if he’d never been asked before.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

Founded in 1938 as Hamburg Heaven, Prime Burger earned praise in 2003 for its “superlative beef patty” from Ed Levine of The New York Times. It was named an “American Classic” by the James Beard Foundation in 2004. More recently, it was the subject of a seven-minute video, “This Must Be the Place,” by Lost and Found Films.

Prime Burger crossed generations in its appeal. Molly Woodward has been coming since she and her sister, Tessa, were infants. Their father, Douglas, introduced them to the restaurant, to which he was first brought by his father, Charles. “I’ve enjoyed their hand-painted signs, camouflaged faux bois clock, nice people, and bacon-related foods since 1986,” Ms. Woodward wrote on her blog, Vernacular Typography. She was having a Cheddar cheeseburger on Friday with her family.

The importance of the décor is more than nostalgic, said Theodore Grunewald, a preservationist whose interest lies in mid-century Modernism. “It’s the Four Seasons of the everyman,” he said, “and we have few examples of that intact.”

Brenda Mauro, who used to patronize Prime Burger regularly when she worked in mid-Manhattan, stopped by for her last lunch on Friday, pausing to say farewell to Mr. DiMiceli. As she settled her bill, she paid him what may be the ultimate New York compliment: “I came all the way from downtown.”

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A Vegetarian Burger Bash

Andrew Scrivani for The New York TimesMushroom and Grain Cheeseburgers

For burger lovers who want to cut back on meat, vegetarian burgers can be a tasty and healthful way to recreate the burger experience. In this week’s Recipes for Health, Martha Rose Shulman offers five ways to create vegetarian burgers at home. She writes:

I wanted to work on veggie burgers because I have never had a commercial one that I liked. They all taste overprocessed to me, with no fresh flavors. I’ve had much better luck making burgers from Lukas Volger’s excellent cookbook “Veggie Burgers Every Which Way.” I especially like his bean and vegetable combos.

Puréed beans make a great binder for grain and vegetable burgers, and an egg added to the mixture will help to hold it together. (If you want to keep them vegan you can, though you have to be careful when you flip the burgers over because they tend to fall apart.) I found that all of these burgers somehow tasted better a day after they were assembled ? the flavors had gelled, the burgers held together better, and a burger that seemed a bit dry to me right after cooking did not seem so dry the next day when reheated. I can’t tell you why.

Like Mr. Volger, I found the best way to cook these vegetarian burgers was to brown them on one side in an ovenproof frying pan, then turn them and stick the pan in a 375-degree oven for 10 minutes. Turning can be tricky, but if the burgers do crumble, just patch them back together with your spatula, apply a little pressure and put the pan into the oven.

Here are five new recipes for homemade veggie burgers.

Beet, Rice and Goat Cheese Burgers: Make these ahead for quick meals through the week and reheat in a medium oven or a frying pan.

Curried Lentil, Rice and Carrot Burgers: Indian spices liven up these burgers. The turmeric offers bonus antioxidant health benefits, but even without it, they’re in abundance in this recipe, with all the carrots and ginger.

Quinoa and Greens Burger: Rainbow quinoa is a great choice for this recipe — because it’s pretty, and because the red, black and golden quinoa grains all have slightly different textures.

Quinoa and Vegetable Burgers With Asian Flavors: This vibrant burger is made with both cooked and uncooked vegetables.

Mushroom and Grain Cheeseburgers: Barley is a traditional hearty partner for mushrooms, but brown rice is just as tasty in this burger.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 3, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of the author of “Veggie Burgers Every Which Way.” He is Lukas Volger, not Luke.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

A Quixotic Solution: The Test-Tube Burger

ReutersMark Post’s genetically engineered burger array.

Four months ago, Mark Post, a professor of physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, drew broad attention when he announced that he was close to producing a hamburger without a cow at his laboratory at a cost of about $330,000.

Dr. Post is literally growing meat from a single stem cell. (The cell for the meat is from the muscle of a special breed of Belgium cow that grows especially large and strong.)

While it is a complicated process, Dr. Post, whose research specialty is tissue engineering, said the science has already been developed by the medical community and the challenge now is honing the manufacturing process. He calls his innovation “no-kill meat,” but I think it might more accurately, albeit less appetizingly, be called petri dish meat.

This afternoon I attended a conference on technological innovation, organized by the Rockefeller Foundation, where Dr. Post was a featured speaker. Because his invention has the theoretical potential to relieve some pressures on the environment, I wanted to see how viable his idea was, business-wise.

Livestock graze on 70 percent of the world’s arable land, Dr. Post said. They consume vast quantities of declining fresh-water supplies. On another front, ruminant livestock produce a whopping 28 percent of global methane, which is a less common but far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon.

In his presentation, Dr. Post said his invention had the potential to vastly reduce the amount of land, water and energy used. In fact, he could reduce energy use by 90 percent, he said.

While it was not clear how the calculation was made, a lot of problems would have to be solved first. For starters, making the lab meat currently requires a lot of electricity to stimulate the muscle cells to contract. And most electricity is currently made by burning fossil fuels.

Dr. Post says his lab is working on various ways to cut down on energy use. Reproducing cells produce their own heat, for example, and if that heat could be caught and channeled back into the manufacturing process, it would be a great savings, he said.

“The important thing is we know all the variables” of the manufacturing process so they can be made more efficient, he said in a brief interview later. Still, I don’t think I’ll be buying anything labeled laboratory hamburger in the near future.

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