Black Bean Harissa Burgers (for your Five-Minute Buns)

February 12th, 2009

black-bean-burger

Normally, I’ll admit, I blanch at the thought of making a veggie burger from scratch. Most recipes seem to call for 37 different vegetables, all diced just so, not to mention the sixteen other ingredients that they’ve never even heard of at the mainstream grocery store. Plus all that chopping and cooking and stirring takes an eternity, throughout which you are only growing hungrier by the minute. Then, after all that labor, well, most veggie burgers are kind of boring.

Eh, no thanks. My time would be much better spent shelling beans.

But that’s not this recipe. This recipe requires just one bowl, one skillet, and almost no chopping, which means you can stand around and sip Zinfandel (red, but that goes without saying I hope) while you wait for the burgers to crisp up in the pan. The finished burger has enough flavor and heat to keep Emeril hopping. And since the bread dough is in your refrigerator, just waiting to be shaped and baked, and the harissa was made last week, you just might have time to catch up on your TiVo.

A word on beans. I’ve used the miscellaneous black beauties from my garden, a mix and match of Black Valentines and Cherokee Trail of Tears and whatever else might have reverted to black over the course of the summer. You probably don’t have those, but don’t fret. The black beans from your own garden will work just fine. None left, you say? You can even use beans from a can (just don’t tell Mark Bittman). Whichever route you go, black beans are the ideal beans for burgers because of their rich, creamy but not-too-moist texture as well as their smoky, chocolatey undertones.

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bun

If you use canned beans or otherwise end up with too much liquid in your burger mix then you’ll need to add some flour. The problem is that flour tastes like, well, flour.  To avoid pastiness,  place a cup and a half of flour in a bowl. Sprinkle in a teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of smoked paprika and a dash of salt and black pepper. Stir well, and then use this reserved flour to add body as you’re shaping your black bean burgers if they’re insisting on being free-form. The sticklers and mathematicians among you might point out that we’ve now moved into two-bowl territory. Technically I suppose. (The flour bowl is not really dirty. Just wipe it clean with a napkin…).

The Recipe:

Black Bean Harissa Burgers

1 large shallot, finely diced
4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
3 cups cooked black Valentine beans (about 2 14-ounce cans of black beans
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon harissa paste
2 teaspoons ground cumin seed (or cumin powder)
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
½ teaspoon cayenne or Aleppo pepper flakes
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1/3 cup dry bread crumbs
1/3 cup fresh chopped cilantro
1/3 cup fresh chopped parsley
3 tablespoons olive oil or vegetable oil for pan frying

6 Five-Minute Buns
Sour cream, goat cheese, avocado and onion slices for garnish

avocado

Dice onion and mince garlic and set aside for ten minutes (this allows the allicin to be released and lets it hold up against cooking heat).

In a large skillet, heat ½ tablespoon of the oil and lightly sauté the garlic and onion on medium-low heat just until translucent, about five minutes.

In a food processor, pulse 1 ½ cups of the beans, the cooked garlic and shallot, mayonnaise, bread crumbs, harissa, cumin, paprika, cayenne, cinnamon, salt and pepper until a rough puree forms, scraping down sides once or twice. Transfer mixture to a large bowl and stir in the remaining beans, cilantro and parsley. Form mixture into patties (it will make four rather large burgers or six girl-sized ones), coating hands with the seasoned flour mixture and adding as necessary.

Heat remaining oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Place patties in skillet and cook until the outsides are crisp, about four minutes on each side. Serve on the buns and garnish with sour cream, goat cheese, avocados and onion slices. If you like, use more harissa as a condiment.

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Five Minute Buns and Harissa for your Black Bean Burgers

February 10th, 2009

caraway-roll

Warning: This post could lead to a serious obsession with daily bread baking.

I discovered the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day technique rather by accident. I’d been cooking from Shirley Corriher’s Bakewise, a brilliant tome that I had been awaiting like the Promised Land. All the way back in 1997 when Corriher’s first book, Cookwise, came out, she’d been alluding to the ever-forthcoming Bakewise. When it finally came out at the end of last year, I was there in line like it was the next chapter in the Harry Potter saga. Both books are dense, sometimes plodding but accessible and intelligent hands-on guides to why things do what they do in the kitchen – and how to make them do other things instead — and both have become indispensible in my kitchen.

In Bakewise, Corriher argues that there is no need to knead yeast dough because it kneads itself as it rises, and hand kneading leads to over-oxidation, which compromises flavor. And who needs that? Still, I was resistant. After all, I’ve been making bread for 15 years and I’ve gotten quite accomplished at it, and every baker knows that the secret is in the kneading.

Blast it. Corriher was right.

loaf

But back to Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

The first time I made golden, crusty, batter-free no-knead bread, I assumed it was a fluke. But it was so darn easy that I tried it again, and then again. Soon I had far more dough than I needed (since I hadn’t kneaded) and so I baked a chunk of it and tossed the rest in the fridge. Though it was a bit tricky, figuring out how long out of the fridge the dough had to rise, how warm it should get, how long cold dough would keep, etc, overall I was pleased with the results I was getting. But I wasn’t telling anyone. I kept right on impressing my friends and family with my homemade bread,  and I continued to let them think it was all very hard work.

Then in November, Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois gave us Artisan Bread in Five Minutes Day: The Discovery that Revolutionizes Home Baking (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007). This beautiful little book takes all the guesswork out of it, and it blew my palate wide open. They also blew my cover.

I had one recipe I’d been sticking with, a basic, four-ingredient bread. I knew how to make it work without kneading and after cold storage. Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day has recipes for everything bread-like, no exaggeration. But first they teach you how and why.

The book’s opening chapters tell you all you need to know about no-knead bread (okay, I’ll stop now): what the different flours do, why it’s okay to skip the kneading and why the bread’s flavor is actually enhanced if the dough rests for several days. Hertzberg and Francois illustrate  how to handle and shape bread, and how to take it to the right temperature, and most importantly, how to bake it to achieve the coveted crusty European texture. And then we get into the recipes.

The first recipe is the only one you’ll ever really need, a simple, rustic flour-salt-water-yeast bread. Hertzberg and Francois’s recipe for boule turns out a perfect loaf – chewy, moist, crusty, with a lovely, slightly tangy flavor. They offer slight modifications for turning this basic recipe into baguettes, ciabatta and a tartine, and I tried them all. No matter everything I know about the merits and virtues of eating whole grains – this is, and always will be, my favorite kind of bread. Give me a grassy olive oil, some freshly shaved Parmesan, a dash of salt and I’m in simple-carb heaven.

bread-parmesan

But woman cannot subsist on white bread alone, and Francois and Hertzberg make sure we won’t have to. The rest of the book is filled with all those intimidating-sounding recipes: whole wheat sandwich bread, olive bread, limpa, pumpernickel, walnut-date loaves, flatbread and pizza, Moroccan anise and barley bread, and a dizzying selection of dessert breads, including sticky buns, jam-filled beignets, and chocolate bread.

And no, you don’t have to knead any of it.

And yes, you can have freshly baked buns for your black bean burgers in five minutes a day (plus baking time). You just have to make the dough and store it till you want it. Here’s the recipe, based on Hertzberg and Francois’s European Wheat Bread:

Crusty Wheat Buns (for the harissa burgers that are coming soon)

3 cups lukewarm water
1 ½ tablespoons granulated yeast (I use instant)
1 ½ teaspoons salt
½ cup rye flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
5 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour
Cornmeal or semolina for the baking stone

Mix yeast, salt and water in a 5-qart bowl or lidded (not airtight) container.  Stir together the flours, then add to the yeast mixture. Stir to combine but don’t knead it. You can use a wooden spoon or a mixer with a dough hook; if using the latter, run mixer just until ingredients come together.

Cover and allow to rise at room temperature for about 2 hours, until the dough rises and then collapses on itself. Now the dough can be shaped and baked, or stored for up to 14 days.  Whatever you are storing should be kept in a lidded container or a Ziploc bag that is not sealed completely — the bread will need a bit of air.

Select the amount of bread you wish to bake. Shape pieces into buns, keeping in mind that they will double in size as they rise and bake.  Allow to rise for 30 minutes.

When there are 15 minutes left in the rising time, preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place a baking stone on the top rack. Just before baking, bring a kettle of water to a boil and place a tray on the bottom rack of the oven. Pour the water into the tray, being careful of the steam that will hiss towards your face. In other words, don’t lean over the oven!

Sprinkle the baking stone with semolina. You may brush the rolls with olive oil and dust with salt, caraway seeds, or other seeds of your choice. Slide rolls onto the baking stone and bake, turning once, for about 20-25 minutes, until golden brown on the outside and soft on the inside.

And now – what to serve inside the buns?

Harissa

In a few days – I swear, dear, loyal readers. A few. Days – I’ll bring you the black bean burger recipe. I can’t blow all my material in one post. And you’ll be grateful that I showed you  how to make harissa when it’s time to make the burgers.

harissa

Suddenly I can’t get enough harissa. Maybe it’s because – up until this week – it’s been bracingly cold outside. Maybe it’s because I’ve had a permanent sinus headache. Or perhaps it’s just that lately I’ve been striking out in the kitchen. Tell me you all go through phases like this, where everything you cook is disappointingly bland at best? And more often than not it falls apart, has a funky, dissonant flavor, and just plain fails? That’s been the story at Cucina Rebecca. My kitchen episodes this month have all ended up on Bloopers.

Thank goodness for harissa. The aromatic, fiery and yet surprisingly complex spice mix has become my go-to sauce, my condiment du jour, my ingredient to liven and loosen things up and, when I’m living recklessly (or just really need to blow my nose), my crostini spread of choice. Harissa packs a punch and it’s not sorry for it later. And it’s so startling that, I, at least, have forgotten to be disappointed in my food.

chilis

Now, if you’re just here to eat, skip this paragraph. I’m about to explain to you why harissa is so valuable during the apex of winter cold season. In short, harissa is brimming with capsaicin and allicin, a potent infection-fighting duo.  Capsaicin, found in chiles, inhibits substance P, a neuropeptide associated with inflammatory processes (which is also being studied for its role in heart disease). The hotter the chili pepper, the more capsaicin it contains – and the bigger its health punch. Chiles also are super-high in pro-vitamin A, affectionately referred to by nutritionists as the “infection-fighting vitamin”. Then there’s allicin. Found in raw or lightly cooked garlic, allicin is a powerful antibacterial and antiviral agent; when it joins forces with the vitamin C, also abundant in garlic, they become a force for harmful microbes to reckon with. Recent research has shown allicin to be effective not only against common colds, flus, and stomach bugs, but also against the scary pathogenic microbes including tuberculosis, botulism, and even MRSA (the bad staph). Need I say more?

The Recipe
Though you can purchase harissa, making it yourself lets you control the heat and the quality of the spices. It will keep in the refrigerator for several weeks.

piquin-small peppers-small

Not unlike rouille, my other favorite condiment, harissa is built upon a pungent base of fresh garlic and chile peppers. To achieve a layered profile, I use a variety of dried chiles of varying heat. The flavor is then shaped and balanced by cumin, coriander and caraway; though it disturbs the nice alliteration  I’ve also seen some harissa made with rose petals.

4 ounces dried chiles (I use a mix of anchos, pasillas, a bit of dundicat and a chipotle for smokiness)
6 cloves garlic, peeled
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon caraway seeds, freshly ground
1 1/2 teaspoons coriander seeds, freshly ground
½ – 1 teaspoon cumin
2 tablespoons good olive oil

Place dried chiles in a bowl. Bring a cup of water to a boil and pour it over the chiles to rehydrate them. Allow to steep for 30 minutes. Remove the chiles from the water remove the stems and seeds (you can toss in a few seeds if you really want the heat). Place in a mini food processor or a mortar and pestle. Add the fresh garlic, salt, caraway, coriander and cumin and pulse or pound to grind the spices and combine them. Gradually add the olive oil and continue mixing until blended. Don’t use too much oil – you want the harissa to hold its shape on a spoon. Feel free to adjust the seasonings to your preference – I’m not a fan of caraway so I go light, but other recipes use more.

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Runner Cannellinis with Capers, Tuna and Lime

January 25th, 2009

bean-caper-tuna-mix

I suppose it’s like taking down your Christmas tree a week before Easter. Or finally washing the winter grime off your car in July. Getting your cat neutered when he’s 12? Oh, you get the idea. Procrastination of the shameful sort. Today I shelled my beans.

Calypso, cannellini runner, Hidatsa shield bean, cowpeas, and a bloody bushel of black beans. Type? Unknown. All black beans look pretty much alike.

I learned a few things:
1.    All beans seem to default to black. I planted eight different varieties last spring, each of them with striking markings. But when I cracked each shell and shook the beans loose, they all seemed to have dried to black, even though I started out with only two ebony varieties, the Black Valentine and the Cherokee Trail of Tears.
2.    Beans are undervalued.  Seriously so. Why are they so cheap?  I was giddy when they were exploding like graffiti all over the vegetable garden in July – little did I know of the work around the bend. Whatever your beans cost? It’s worth every penny.
3.    I would have starved on the frontier. As much as I pride myself for my kitchen smarts, it turns out that I’m incredibly inefficient.  Bumbling, even. An hour into this shelling thing and I had about a cup of black beans , a half cup of calypsos, half that of cowpeas (they’re a lot smaller), plus a few teaspoons of odds and ends.
4.    I will eat every bite of every dish I ever make with these beans. I moved heaven and earth to nurture these beans from seed to seed and then pry them from the shells. Nothing is getting in the way of my eating them.
5.    Beans are seductive. After awhile the giddiness I felt in the garden returned, as the pile of empty shells grew large and the bowls of harvested beans grew fuller and their strange markings were  so evocative that I couldn’t help but giggle a little and shove my hands into the bowls, gathering fistfuls and letting them fall through my fingers. Maybe it was just because we were finally at the Hallelujah Chorus in Handel’s Messiah (good suggestion, Gilda…) And, I know now why money is sometimes referred to as beans. I used to think it was facetious but I don’t think so anymore.

hidatsa-shield-bean

bean-mix-small beans-half

So. Other than removing the husk from a garden full of dried beans, what have I been doing? It’s a good question. I don’t seem to be the only food blogger who has disappeared into the night. My Google Reader has been eerily silent. As far as I know, there’s no official code that says that we all take the month of January off, but it does sort of make sense. After the food overload of the holidays, a bit of turning inward and away from the kitchen seems inevitable. You’d have to worry about us if we never got tired of food.

I, for one, have been thinking a lot. I find it hard to both think and write in the same space; they are distinctly separate functions, interminably bound together but unreachably discrete. In my absence, Becky and the Beanstock turned one (first post, January 5 2008,  Seafood chili with Moon Beans ).  Twelve months, more than 70 posts, and a year that has felt like a lifetime later, where am I?  I’ve got lots of ideas, some I’d like to try out, others I’d like to return to (this blog has shifted over time), some things I’d like to add. Most importantly, there are themes I’d really like to explore, develop, evolve with.  Hang tight with. Our world is becoming a vastly different place and in a short amount of time.  Food documents our history, and I’d like to be one of the voices that does this.

So. Give me a bit more thinking time, and I’ll come back and tell you where we’re headed. In the meantime, I’m keeping it simple in the kitchen. As such, I’m taking a queue from The Minimalist himself.

Every food blogger, culinary columnist and cooking discussion forum has taken on Mark Bittman’s  In/Out Pantry List for 2009, so I’m not going to.  I’ll just say one thing: judging from the vitriol in the barrage of comments, those who love to cook better fear having children.  And I can imagine why – I’d likely trade in the day-old bread for a bag (or does it come in a box?) of Panko too if I had a little one AND a job. So for now I’ll revel in cooking from scratch, and maybe I’ll make a point of sharing the results with my friends/family with children.

This recipe is adapted from Mark Bittman’s proclamation that canned beans are out for 2009, except in emergencies. He suggested cooking up a pound and doing various things with them. One idea was to mix them with a can of oil-packed tuna. I took my Runner Cannellini beans, freshly shelled, and here’s what I did.

(And I have to believe that even if I had a minivan full of kids, I’d make the time to cook up my own beans from scratch.)

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limes-half oil-pepper-half

tuna

Runner Cannellinis with Tuna and Capers
2 cans water-packed Albacore tuna, well-drained
1 ½ cups cooked cannellini beans
2 tablespoons capers
¼ bunch fresh parsley, minced
¼ bunch fresh cilantro, minced
Juice of ½ of a lime
fresh ground black pepper
sprinkle of paprika (half-sharp if you like)
1-2 tablespoons good olive oil

Place tuna, beans and capers in a bowl. Stir to combine, being careful not to smash the beans. Add chopped parsley and cilantro and stir. Add fresh lime juice, black pepper, paprika and olive oil and toss again until just combined.

This simple dish is fresh, hearty with a crusty bread, and full of omega-3s, antioxidants, fiber, protein and trace minerals. This recipe makes enough for two people to enjoy this as a light meal and then take the leftovers for lunch the next day. Plus the cats will like it too….

bread-slices

abbie

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Irish Potatoes and Irish Beer (with Red Kale)

January 9th, 2009

At first glance, especially with such an up-close shot (which I can take with my Christmas toy), it might look like I’m repeating myself. The last post was covered in cheese too. But no, I’m not losing my memory just yet. It was you. For whatever reason your comments just kept coming in response to the last post and I’ll do anything for attention. I figured it had to be the cheddar.

Then when we step back a bit and snap the photo wide open, you can see we’re actually dealing with potatoes. Under that cheese it’s a whole different world this week.

To my mind, this is pinnacle of winter food. Heavy, steaming, need-a-nap—or-a-good-night’s-sleep-after food. Winter has been keeping us steady company this week (though still no snow to speak of) and I hear it’s going to get gaspingly cold this weekend, so what else is a girl to do? Next I’ll be making pot pies.

The comfort of this potato dish not withstanding, I learned something important this week. You’re going to laugh at me (or be horrified, one) but… I made my first ever fond. I know that sounds ridiculous, the fond being such a flavor powerhouse but honestly, I always thought they were for meat-eaters. Traditionally it’s the browned beef or chicken that clings to the side of the pan until the wonderful deglazing liquid bubbles it loose, am I wrong? Apparently I was. Onion and garlic fond is worth its weight in saffron! Heady stuff.

It’s like the cell phone and the  Ragg wool sock — how ever did I cope before? So now I know. We can just forget I ever didn’t.

The inspiration for this recipe came from my current favorite cookbook, which was sent to me at Christmas by my sister-in-law in Seattle. Anne-Marie doesn’t have much time to cook herself these days, with three boys under 8, but she always knows somehow. All of my best cookbooks have come from her. This year’s surprise, when the gift wrap slid off and onto the floor, was The Farm to Table Cookbook: The Art of Eating Locally by Ivy Manning.

Now, locavor-itis is so epidemic it’s almost not cool anymore, but this book rises above all the jargon and frenzy. For one thing, it’s more than just a cookbook – it’s a primer. Ever wonder just what the difference really is between all those beautifully garish, hard-shelled winter squash? Or whether the plethora of delicate spring greens have distinctive flavors? It’s in there. And the pages are sprinkled with recipes from well-known chefs from prestigious restaurants across the country (Paley’s Place, Carafe, Tilth) so it’s sort of like getting ten cookbooks in one. Even if you never actually use the recipes, the photos make this collection coffee-table worthy.

I’ll use them though. It’s one of my New Year’s goals — but perhaps more on that next time.

So, how did I arrive at this recipe to start my journey? I picked up a bunch of Redbor kale at my Whole Foods market and flipped to the winter section of the cookbook to find out what I could make with it. The redbor is a hearty, almost squid-inky purple winter variety (most kale prefers colder temps) that’s at its peak from November through March. Crisp and tightly curled, it keeps its stunning color after it has been cooked.

There are no beans in this recipe. I thought of throwing some in but that would have been merely gratuitous and you all don’t tend to put up with stuff like that.

Twice-Baked Irish Potatoes with Irish Beer and Purple Kale

4 large (8-10 ounces each) russet potatoes, scrubbed and unpeeled
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons olive oil
1 medium red onion, finely diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup Guinness or other stout beer
1 small bunch Redbor or other red kale
2 Morningstar vegetarian sausage patties
1 cup buttermilk
1 ½ cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon mustard powder
salt and freshly ground pepper
sprinkle of paprika (use half-sharp if you want a touch of heat)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Rub the potatoes with a teaspoon of the olive oil, then wrap each one individually in heavy aluminum foil. Place in the oven and bake until they are soft but not mushy, about 50 minutes. Allow them to cool slightly.

Heat a teaspoon of olive oil in a skillet. Cook the vegetarian sausage patties (honest, you won’t be able to tell they’re not meat. I can’t….) until they are browned. Break them into small pieces with the edge of a spatula and brown them some more.

Heat the remaining olive oil in a stainless steel (not non-stick!) skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and garlic and cook, stirring often, until they begin to brown, about 15 minutes. Add a splash of the Guinness and scrape the browned bits from the sides of the pan back into the mix. Continue to cook this way, occasionally deglazing the pan with a bit more beer until the onion/garlic mix is deeply browned and all the Guinness is used, about 30 minutes. You will have an incredibly rich and fragrant brown mess in the center of your pan.

Slice the ribs from the kale leaves and discard. Chop the leaves and toss half of it to the onion-garlic fond, stirring gently to wilt the leaves. Add the remaining kale, stir and then cover. Cook until it’s tender, about 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat.

Using a sharp serrated knife, slice the top quarter of each potato. Using a small spoon, carefully scoop out the flesh from each potato, leaving a ¼-inch thick shell on the insides. In a bowl mash the potato flesh with the buttermilk, mustard powder and salt and pepper. Gently add the kale mixture, ½ cup shredded cheddar and the vegetarian sausage, stirring to combine. Mound the mixture back into the potato shells, then sprinkle the potatoes with the remaining cheddar and the paprika. Bake until the cheese is browned and bubbling, about 20 minutes.

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