Dinner Club: Beet Burgers, Curry Fries, Blueberry Cobbler

Tonight we had another dinner club with our friend Trevor. He has mentioned several times that he really enjoys beets, but doesn't eat them enough. When I saw the recipe for beet burgers from the PPK website, I knew I had to make them for him.



The recipe for the beet burgers is from the PPK website. The only deviation I added was about 1 tablespoon of cumin powder. I decided to do the suggested pairing with the baked curry fries, although my curry powder was very sweet and I almost thought I had used cinnamon rather than curry powder on the fries. These were very good, the technique of boiling the potatoes first before baking is involved, but it resulted in a good texture for the fries. I put too many fries on my baking sheet so they did not crisp up enough.

For the cobbler, I looked at the recipe from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker for blueberry cobbler and adapted the following to use up our 1.5 pints of fresh blueberries from our food delivery.

Blueberry Cobbler for the Slow Cooker
Ingredients
1.5 pints fresh blueberries
1/4 cup or less sugar
1 T cornstarch

1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup or less sugar
1/4 cup oil or softened butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Method
In a 3.5 qt slow cooker (you can also use the same amount in a 1.5 qt slow cooker), add the blueberries, sugar, and cornstarch. Mix to coat. In a bowl mix the oats, sugar, oil, and cinnamon. Spread over the top of the blueberries. Cook on high for about 1.5 hours or until the top is crispy. Serve with Coconut Bliss Ice Cream.




Notes
Everyone agreed, this was one of the best things we have eaten in a while. My husband and Trevor both eat meat and they were very pleased with the tastiness of the patty. I had my husband eat some of the patty dough before he cooked it up and he said that not only does it look like meat, it tasted a bit like ground beef as well. So very tasty. The cobbler was good as well, but the real star was the beet burger.

Olive Lentil Burger

My friend, Beard Matt, gave me a ride home the other day, and in order to pay him back, I asked if he wanted to come and partake of our dinner. We wanted to put these on the grill, but they are waaaayyy too soft for that. After baking or cooking in the cast iron skillet, we put them on the grill for a few minutes.



I followed the instructions on the Post Punk Kitchen Blog.

Notes
We tried both baking and cooking in a cast iron skillet. I think I prefer these in the skillet, rather than baked, only because they came out much faster.

These burgers were really good. They were even better the second day. I will be making these again and again. Note the long times until dinner is on the table. We made the lentils the night before so we didn't have to wait for them to cook on the day of. I want to mess with the texture because we added a ton of bread crumbs to the mixture and even an egg to see if we could get it to form up better, but it did not. Once it was cooked, it held up fine on the bun, but it was soo soft before cooking.