Simple Grilled Portobello Mushroom Burger

Prepare for more less than mediocre photos, my friends!  I recently found out about yet another cooking group that I really want to join.  It's called, you can read about it at that link.  They only let you join if your blog has 100 recipes with photos.  I have more than 100 recipes, but not all of them have photos.  Added 'em up and about 75 have photos.  That means everything I post for the next while will be accompanied by a photograph unless I absolutely cannot stand to post one.  I'll also go back and add photos to some posts that don't have one.  You may want to shield your eyes, don't let my pictures deter you from trying the recipes :)  Oh and of COURSE I will not just be posting random recipes to get a photo up.  My standards are always that I only post recipes that I love, turn out great, and are ready for you to successfully whip up in your own kitchen!

On to the recipe!  I actually have a backlog of recipes (AND photos) to post, but for some reason I prefer waiting a couple days between posts.  Don't want to bury my recipes too quickly, you know?  I will probably pick up the pace though as I have like 10 recipes waiting in the wings and the pile will only keep growing. 

I am still loving my new grill and today's recipe is for grilled portobello mushroom burgers.  You may look at the ingredients and not be very impressed, since the actual burger is just a big ol' mushroom, olive oil, salt, and pepper, then it's topped with a bit of garlic aioli.  But sometimes simpler is better, and this burger is for people who really love mushrooms.  I have tried other portobello burgers where the mushroom flavor was completely covered up with a marinade or glaze or something.  They were good, but we LIKE the flavor of mushrooms and do not feel it needs to be covered up.  Cooked this way, they still taste like mushrooms, and the garlic aioli accentuates the flavor instead of obliterates it.  Plus, if you're paying $6.99 a pound for these overgrown button mushrooms (really) like we are, where's the sense in making it taste like something else?  In any case, we really, really liked these burgers and will definitely make them again!  Next time I am thinking of adding a slice of swiss cheese and making the mother of all mushroom swiss burgers.

Simple Grilled Portobello Mushroom Burger

portobello mushrooms, 1 for each person
olive oil
salt
pepper
buns (make sure they are vegan if you're serving someone who is vegan)
garlic aioli (leave off if you want the burgers vegan!)
any other toppings you want, like lettuce, tomato, or grilled red onion slices (yum!)

Let your grill preheat.  While that happens, wash and thoroughly dry your mushrooms, then cut off the stems of all the mushrooms so the stems are flush with the rest of the cap.   Brush olive oil all over the mushrooms (I used oil on a paper towel), then sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.  When grill is ready, stick the mushrooms on the grill, gill side up, and grill for 5 minutes over medium-high heat with the cover down.  You may want to check to make sure they aren't burning (though a little bit of black is tasty).  Before flipping them, one at a time pick the mushrooms up with tongs and pour out any accumulated oil and juices in the gills.  They will cause flare ups if you don't.  Cook the burgers on the other side for the same amount of time.  Flip again and cook a couple minutes on the first side, then flip once more.  By this time, the mushroom should feel soft when you poke it with your tongs.  Lower the heat and toss your buns, cut side down, on the grill and grill until toasted.  Drain the mushrooms briefly on paper towels, then serve on the buns with the garlic aioli and any vegetabley toppings you want.

Sauteed Spinach and Mushrooms

There is a distinct lack of veggie side dish recipes on my blog.  It's not because I don't serve vegetables with meals- I definitely do- it' s just that I tend to go really simple.  We like most vegetables as they are and of course the less stuff (butter, cheese, etc) added to them, the healthier they stay.  So the majority of veggies at my house just get steamed, roasted, or eaten raw.  No recipe required.  Keeping with that trend, this is hardly a recipe and pretty much anyone can figure it out, but I've decided to post it anyway in case you haven't made it before.  In spite of its simplicity, I had never actually prepared sauteed spinach as a side dish until recently.  Of course I had sauteed spinach to go in other recipes, but never served it on its own.  It's really good though and a great way to get your greens!  My husband has actually mentioned it a couple of times since I first made it because he wants it again.

The recipe is very easy, quick, and flexible.  You can use chopped onion instead of (or in addition to) the mushroom, or just cook the garlic and spinach.  Willing to bet some toasted sliced almonds would be a great addition, too- just cook them in the skillet over medium-low heat for a few minutes, stirring frequently until toasty brown, then set them aside to cool while you proceed with the recipe and add 'em back in at the end.  Yummy!

Sauteed Spinach and Mushrooms

2 t olive oil
2 large button mushrooms, halved and sliced thinly
2 cloves garlic, minced
10 oz bag baby spinach
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high.  Add mushrooms and saute for a couple of minutes, until they begin to turn translucent.  Add garlic and saute for 30 seconds or so.  Add the spinach to the skillet, a large handful at a time.  Cook and stir until it wilts (tongs are a great tool for this!), then add another handful of spinach.  Continue in this fashion until all of the spinach has been added to the pot.  Saute until the spinach is as tender as you would like, another minute or so.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Serve the spinach in bowls if you don't want spinach juice on the rest of your food!

Yield: 2 servings

Tuesdays with Dorie: Oasis Naan

Hooray, finally a new Tuesdays with Dorie post!  Each month the group makes two recipes and participants are supposed to make at least one of them.  I didn't get to make EITHER recipe last month.  For the first recipe, Hungarian Shortbread which is filled with rhubarb jam, I got the date mixed up and anyway it was too early in the season here for the rhubarb the recipe required.  I do plan to make it soon though because it sounds delicious and the people who did make it seemed to really like it!  The second recipe was Pecan Sticky Buns.  Sounds good, but very complicated, and an awful lot of sticky buns for two people to eat since apparently they don't reheat well.  Also neither of us likes pecans in our baked goods.

So I was very happy to join the fun this time around with a recipe called Oasis Naan.  To check out the recipe, visit the blog Always Add More Butter or Of Cabbages and King Cake.  There's also a very helpful two part video that shows the creators of the recipe baking it with Julia Child, as well as a great article with lots of information.  If you've never had it before (I hadn't until tonight!), naan is a type of leavened flat bread served with all kinds of Middle Eastern dishes.  Many types of naan are quite long and skinny, but Oasis Naan is round and puffy around the edges, with coarse salt, green onion, and cumin seed sprinkled on top before baking.  It's baked in a very hot oven until crisp and golden on the bottom with some golden spots on top.  Like I said, this was my first time eating naan, but I thought it was amazing!  The bread itself had outstanding flavor, a wonderfully chewy texture, and the salt and green onion on top was delightful.  I'd imagine the cumin would have been great too if I had remembered to buy it.  Oops!  I love cumin and was a little sad that my naan had to go without, but there's always next time.  Weird as this may sound, I think the dough would make a dreamy pizza crust and plan to try it.  (Update:  I have used this as pizza dough and it is indeed delicious!)

As for the recipe itself, I followed it very closely.  Ended up using an extra half cup of flour in the dough and kneading it in my stand mixer on low for 5 minutes.  The recipe said to let the dough rise at room temperature for 2 hours, but because of timing issues, mine rose for 3 hours and got a little bigger than it was supposed to, though the recipe said it was okay if that happened.  My bread may have been a bit chewier because of this, but it was really, really good anyway and the dough developed a wonderful flavor while it rose.  I did form and bake mine a little differently.  My dough was wonderful to work with and although I started rolling the pieces out with a rolling pin like the recipe said, it ended up working better when I just patted it out with my hands.  As for baking, the recipe said to transfer the naan to a pizza stone or a cookie sheet that had preheated for 20 minutes in a 500 degree oven.  I did preheat my oven and cookie sheet properly, but I don't have a pizza peel or anything so I put my naan on a piece of parchment paper, picked up the paper, and put it on the baking sheet.  It worked out really well this way, though the parchment paper hanging over the edge of the baking sheet got VERY dark!  The cookie sheet also melted my favorite oven mitt when I took it out after the last batch of naan, so watch out for that if you do it this way!

All in all, I really liked this recipe.  It was super easy to make, fun to bake, and tasted great.  If you've never used yeast before, this would be a wonderful recipe to start with because the dough is easy to work with, the rising time isn't too important and it's all the more charming if the finished naan isn't perfectly round!  I served my naan with Indian Butter Chicken and steamed rice and we had a very enjoyable dinner.

Chicken Makhani (Indian Butter Chicken)

I made naan for my Tuesdays with Dorie group and of course needed something to serve it with!  A few years ago I had Butter Chicken at a restaurant and it was really good, though I don't remember specifically what it tasted like.  Seemed like a perfect opportunity to make it myself!  My base was this recipe from AllRecipes, but it was thoroughly tweaked based on the recipe's reviews and my own tastes.  It turned out really well and we both thoroughly enjoyed it.  The flavors in the sauce melded perfectly after simmering and it was just delicious.  I will definitely make it again!

Quick Note:  I used my little food processor to grind the cashews, finely chop the onion and shallot (just coarsely chopped them by hand, then pulsed them together in the food processor), and make the garlic ginger paste.  For the garlic ginger paste, I just tossed in a head's worth of peeled garlic cloves and an approximately equal sized piece of peeled fresh ginger, then a tablespoon of water to help turn it into a paste.

Chicken Makhani

1 small onion, finely chopped
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 T oil
2 T butter
2 T garlic ginger paste (see note)
1 bay leaf
1 t garam masala
1 t chili powder
1 t cumin
1 t coriander
a pinch of cayenne pepper (or to taste)
2 t lemon juice
1 C unseasoned tomato sauce (an 8 oz can)
1/4 C finely ground cashews
1 C half and half
1/4 C plain yogurt
3/4 to 1 t salt, or to taste
1 T oil
1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast or thighs, cut into bite size pieces
optional: 1 additional t garam masala and about 1/2 C water

Place oil in a nonstick skillet and heat over medium high.  Add finely chopped onion and shallot and cook until tender, about 5 minutes.  Add butter, garlic ginger paste, bay leaf, garam masala, chili powder, cumin, coriander, cayenne, and lemon juice, and cook, stirring frequently, for about a minute.  Add tomato sauce and cook, stirring frequently, for 2 to 3 minutes.  Stir in cashews, half and half, and yogurt, then salt to taste.  Simmer over low heat, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes.  Pour sauce into a bowl and puree with an immersion blender, regular blender, or food processor (let it cool a bit first if you use a regular blender or food processor!).  Wash skillet and add oil.  Heat over medium high, then add chicken and cook until golden on the outside.  It's okay if it hasn't cooked through yet.  Add the sauce back into the skillet and simmer over a very low heat for about 20 minutes, stirring frequently.  The chicken will finish cooking during this time and the flavors in the sauce will marry and mellow.  You can add the reserved teaspoon of garam masala if you'd like, and water if it gets too thick.  Serve over rice or with naan.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Luscious Lemon Buttercream Frosting

This one is for all the lemon lovers out there!  A creamy, sweet, tart, and lemony buttercream that I found on AllRecipes.  I'm not very fond of most non-chocolate frostings because I despise the flavor of powdered sugar.  Weird, I know, but it just has a strange flavor that is really intense in the majority of homemade frostings.  To compound the issue and possibly even stranger, I also dislike the flavor of vanilla extract in frosting, so most buttercreams offer up a double whammy of unpleasantness for me.  This buttercream is different though!  The bright lemon flavor masks the powdered sugar flavor, and there's just a few drops of vanilla in it to round things out.  It's also stiffer than some buttercreams, which means you could pipe it easily.  I suggest only using the full amount of lemon juice if you want a tart and lemony frosting.  We loved it, but it did cover up the subtle strawberry flavor of the cupcakes I made to go with it (note: the strawberry cake turned out wonderfully, but I want to make it again with more strawberries before posting the recipe).  If you want your frosting to taste less lemony, just substitute a tablespoon of water for one of the tablespoons of lemon juice.  You could also add some lemon zest.  Yum!

  

These cupcakes were made in honor of my bunnies' birthdays.  Yes, their birthdays are celebrated every year; yes, it's partly an excuse to make cake; and yes, I am a crazy bunny lady, but I'm okay with that!  Below is our one eared boy getting a little taste of his birthday cupcake.  He definitely approved, though I'm sure he wishes I'd given him more than just a tiny piece!

 

Luscious Lemon Buttercream Frosting

1/2 C salted butter, softened
2 T lemon juice (or 1 T lemon juice and 1 T water if you want it more mild)
about 5 drops of vanilla extract
3 C powdered sugar
optional: a drop or two of yellow food coloring

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter with the whisk attachment until smooth.  Add lemon juice and vanilla, then add the powdered sugar.  Whisk on low until the sugar is incorporated, then bring it up to medium high and beat it for a couple of minutes until fluffy.  The longer you go, the fluffier it will get.  If it's too thick, add water a teaspoon at a time and if it's too thin, add powdered sugar 1/4 C at a time.  If you're using food coloring, beat it in at the end.  You can of course also use a hand held mixer.  Use the frosting right away or else cover it because the surface will dry.

Yield: Enough frosting for about 18 cupcakes if you use lots like in the picture, or 24 if you spread on a thinner layer.  I have not tried it yet, but I think it would be enough to frost a 9 by 13 cake.  If you want to fill and frost a layer cake, you should make one and a half batches so you have enough.

Best Hamburgers Ever (aka Umami Hamburgers)

On Monday night we bought an inexpensive propane grill!  I've been wanting one for a while because I'm terrible at cooking anything other than veggies, steak, or hot dogs on our hand-me-down round charcoal grill.  My one attempt at grilling chicken resulted in what appeared to be charcoal briquettes.  Last night we had grilled barbecue chicken using Christie Jordan's barbecue sauce from her Southern Plate cook book.  They chicken turned out amazing and I would love to share the recipe for the sauce, but I feel kind of weird doing that since she specifically chose not to post it on her own blog.  The sauce was great but I want to make a few changes next time and will share my version then.  Tonight we decided to go with our favorite hamburger recipe and in the next week we're planning to do portobello mushroom burgers and grilled pizza, too.  Yum!  If anyone has a favorite grill recipe that they think I should try, I would love to hear about it!

Now, on to the recipe.  If you can believe it, I had never cooked a hamburger until about a year ago.  Once or twice I'd made turkey burgers, black bean burgers, and portobello mushroom burgers, but never hamburgers.  They just aren't my thing.  The only ones I ever really cared for are the ones my uncle makes, which are full of garlic.  But then I came across this recipe over at White on Rice Couple and was intrigued by the addition of fish sauce to the meat.  Diane and Todd promised it made the meat extra savory and I just had to try it!  The burgers ended up being out of this world delicious and I've made them several times now over the past months.  I still don't like hamburgers from other places, but we both think these ones are incredible.  This is my tweaked version of the original recipe (with lots of garlic, like my uncle's hamburgers!) and how we love them best.  If you've never tried fish sauce before (or have a bottle languishing in your fridge already), this is a great recipe to use it in!

Sorry there's no picture, I meant to take one but we were hungry!  They just look like your standard hamburger though.  The flavor is what makes them special.

Best Hamburgers Ever

1 lb ground beef (I've used lean and fattier beef with great success)
1 T fish sauce
1 t garlic powder
1/2 t pepper
1/4 t salt

Gently mix together ingredients, being careful not to handle it too much or the burgers will be tough.  Form into 4 patties.  Make them thinner and wider than you want the finished burgers to be because they will shrink when cooked.  Poke a hole in the center with your fingertip so the burger will cook evenly.  To cook the burgers on a stove, heat about 2 T oil in a large nonstick skillet (believe me on the nonstick!) over medium-high heat and cook on one side until browned, then flip and cook on the other side until the burgers reach an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit.  You can add a bit of water to the skillet if the bottoms of the burgers start cooking too much.

If you want to cook the burgers on a grill, just grease the grate and cook the burgers on one side until browned, then flip and cook on the other side, being sure to cook them to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit.  If you want cheeseburgers, when the burgers are done you can top each one with cheese and close the lid on the grill for about a minute or until the cheese melts.  Serve the burgers on toasted buns with whatever toppings you'd like.  A bit of mayonnaise and sliced avocado is especially good!

Yield: 4 hamburgers

Grandma's Baked Garlic Mashed Potatoes

 This fantastic recipe comes not from my grandma, but from the grandma of Kristen, who writes the blog called Forkful of Comfort .  When I saw the recipe I knew I had to try it and I made it a few nights ago.  The result is some of the best mashed potatoes we have ever had!  Creamy, rich, a bit tangy, garlicky, with a delicate crust on top.  We loved them so, so much that after instead of following my original plan to make gnocchi with some of the leftovers, we ate them as is because they were so good.  Just as great is the fact that the mashed potatoes are baked, so you're free to finish up the rest of your cooking while they bake and you can hold them in the oven for a while to stay warm if necessary.  Kristen wrote that she never got to meet her grandma, but if these potatoes are any indication, she was one heck of a cook!

Quick note:  I don't have garlic salt so I made a mixture of 1 part garlic powder to 2 parts salt and used that.  Works just as well and undoubtedly cheaper!

Grandma's Baked Garlic Mashed Potatoes

3 1/2 lbs potatoes
1 t salt for cooking water
1/2 C butter, 2 tablespoons set aside for top
4 oz cream cheese
8 oz sour cream
2 t garlic salt, plus a bit more for top
1/2 t garlic powder (optional, taste it first- I didn't need it)
dried parsley for top
paprika for top

Wash and peel the potatoes.  Cut into 1 1/2 inch chunks and place in a large pot.  Top with water and add 1 t salt.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat slightly and cook until potatoes can be easily pierced with a fork.  Drain water and return to pot.  Mash with a potato masher, then add butter, cream cheese, and sour cream, mashing until smooth.  Stir in garlic salt to taste- you may not want to start with the full amount in case yours has a higher ratio of salt to garlic.  I used the full amount.  Add the optional additional garlic powder if you think it needs more garlic- I did not need to add it.  Preheat oven and grease a 2 quart baking dish.  Spread potatoes in dish.  Cut remaining 2 T butter into little pieces and arrange evenly over top.  Sprinkle with a little garlic salt, parsley, and paprika.  Bake in preheated oven 30 minutes.  If the top is not browned at all, you can crank up the broiler, but be sure not to walk away!  Let potatoes set for 10 minutes before serving.

Yield: About 10 servings