Turkey Burger Flavor Symphony

Simple Suppers

I am not quite sure how this book leapt from the shelf into my hands recently. As readers of this space know, we already have plenty of cookbooks, and the whole point of this blog is to tackle some of the thousands of untapped treasures already on our shelves. Besides, we are not afraid of complicated recipes.

We are, however, only two diners most of the time, with our child now a grown-up a thousand miles from home. And some evenings, we are not prepared to go full-crêpe just for dinner. So pick it up I did, and we were very pleased with the first result, entitled Turkey Burger Sliders with Spicy Lime Mayonnaise.

I use the word "entitled" to signify the author's intent to create sliders, even though I simply made regular-sized burgers. Either way, this is a delicious variation on turkey burgers, with three parts: the burger, the toppings, and the mayo.

The burger itself includes grated ginger, garlic, salt and pepper. I used a lot of ginger, which added a very nice note to the symphony of flavors here. The mayo included fresh lime juice and sriracha sauce. I used the proportions called for, and ended up with mayo that was both too thin and way too abundant. I could have made a soup with it. Next time I will just add a dash of lime and bit of sriracha to a much smaller dollop of mayo than the 1/2 cup in the recipe.

Finally -- the toppings are brilliant. I used a potato peeler to make very thin slices of cucumber, which went on top of the burger, along with a small pile of cilantro leaves. I think this is the first time I have ever used cilantro without chopping it -- just cut a big handful of it away from the stalks. The recipe calls for chopped red onion as well, but sliced up some scallions we had on hand.

This went very well with a fresh fruit salad Pam made, using an infused blackberry ginger vinegar from our friends at Lebherz and a chilled Sauvignon Blanc.

Note: Laura Arnold includes plenty of vegetarian and seafood meals in this thin volume -- stay tuned to see which of these we try.