Category Archives: Food

Easy Vegetarian Bean Burger

Food, Recipes

 

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Easy Vegetarian Bean Burger

a quick, easy, and most importantly - tasty bean burger

Course Main Course
Keyword vegetarian
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 30 minutes
Servings 6
Author Ray

Ingredients

  • 2 cans mixed beans I used Compliments brand, 6 bean mix. Drained, rinsed and pat dry
  • 3/4 cup rolled quick oats quick couple pulses in vitamix
  • 2 each avocado remove pits and mash
  • 3 tsp chipotle powder
  • 1 tsp cumin grind in mortar & pestle
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
  • 1 each egg beaten if using - omit if you want vegan burger patties
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 6 each hamburger buns
  • 1 cup mayonnaise (use a vegan one if that is your preference)
  • 1 each Blazin Chipotle bbq sauce use as a condiment in burger
  • 1 each large beefsteak tomato thickly sliced
  • 1 head butter lettuce rinse and dry leaves
  • 6 slices cheddar cheese optional
  • 1/2 each red onion thinly sliced

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

  2. Spread beans out onto baking sheet, and dry for 5 minutes or so at mid level of oven. Let cool down for another 5 minutes or so.

  3. pulse rolled oats a couple times in Vitamix, and add 2 tsp chipotle powder, ground cumin, salt, pepper.

  4. In a large bowl, add beans, oat & spice mixture, 1/4 of the mashed avocado, the olive oil, and beaten egg, and mash & mix with a fork until mixture comes together.

  5. Divide and form into 6 patties about 4-5" in diameter, and about 1" thick.

  6. Heat skillet, and add vegetable oil. Once it just starts to lightly smoke, add patties and fry for about 3-5 minutes on each side. Should have a golden crispy surface.

  7. While frying, add sliced burger buns to baking sheet and lightly toast in over (should still be at 325 degrees) - perhaps 4 minutes.

  8. Mix remaining mashed avocado, mayonnaise, 1 tsp chipotle powder and mix well.

  9. Prepare toasted bun by applying avocado mayo mixture to bottom, red onion, add bean burger, cheese, tomato (salt & pepper if you like), lettuce. Add some Blazin Chipotle bbq sauce to bun top, and enjoy!

Upgrade for coffee nirvana!

Coffee

After close to two decades of service, I’ve replaced the Quick Mill Andreja Premium machine with a Bezzera Aria TOP espresso machine from iDrinkCoffee.com.  The new machine arrived in just a couple days.

The big upgrades from the old machine include:

  • rotary pump (plumbed in)
  • flow control
  • toggles for steam and hot water wands
  • PID
  • plumbed in drip tray

Bezzera Aria TOP Espresso machine

Aside from challenges getting the correct adaptor to convert the European threads used on the braided water supply hose to North American standards, the machine was easy to set up, and the factory settings of the OPV and PID worked perfectly for me.  I did contact iDrinkCoffee, but they had no adaptors in stock – at least they were able to let me know exactly what I needed.  Home Depot was a bust, but Amazon came through 🙂
Would think these would be included with any machine sold in Canada

The rotary pump is so much quieter than the vibe pump used in the old machine.  The steam power is very strong, and milk is heated and textured in well under 30 seconds!

I was very impressed with the machine settings from the factory – very little time was needed to dial in my current coffee – getting 44 grams of coffee in 30 seconds or so with the first shot I pulled and all the shots after- depending on how much I play around with the flow profile.  The pucks have been coming out well in one piece, and very dry, and most importantly, the shots have been exceptionally tasty!

Pour-overs again :)

Coffee, ,

While our espresso machine is undergoing some maintenance, I’ve pulled out the Hario V-60 and an old electric President’s Choice (PC) burr grinder (about 20 years old).  I don’t like changing the grind setting much on my espresso grinder – a La Cimbali Jr. grinder, since the adjustment from espresso to a grind setting suitable for pour over requires a couple minutes of spinning the adjustment dial.

The PC grinder was a bargain  at only $19.99, but was fragile, and created a huge amount of static resulting in a mess every time it was used.  It does still work, but alignment pins in the hopper have broken, and the lids to hopper and the grinder prompted me to find an inexpensive non-manual replacement.  Main requirements were price (< $100 CDN), little to no static, and uses a burr grinder.

After some Googling, grinders such as the Baratza Encore come up – here that’s around $200 – so scratch that.  I ended up on Amazon, reading through reviews, and perhaps tossing the dice a bit, but ended up choosing this one – a Shardor Conical Burr Grinder (CG855B).  Thousands of ratings with an overall score of 4.4/5 stars.

It was only $79, and a $10 coupon was available on top of that!  There are a couple even less expensive ones, but I liked the grind adjustment setting, and the fact this model specifically includes mention of being anti-static.

Once I received it, I was amazed.  It’s noticeably quieter than my old one,  was easy to adjust, and no static at all!  And the uniformity of the grind was a huge surprise.  For fun I even tried grinding for espresso – and while it did the job and worked, it did bog down a bit while grinding.

We will see how long the grinder lasts, but so far it’s a winner.  Nice and uniform grind, easy to clean, and no static!

 

Canelés – they really aren’t that difficult – you just have to wait :)

Food

After seeing these delicious looking pastries, I had to give them a try – apparently they are a challenge to make.  To get started, I bought a canelé pan on Amazon – one of the non-stick carbon steel varieties, and a bag of what was advertised on the Amazon site as food grade DIY beeswax pellets.  Printed right on the bag, yet not mentioned on the site was a warning, clearly stating the product is not edible.  Not sure how anyone could say something that is not edible could possibly be food grade.  Oh well – back to Amazon it goes (keeping the pan though!).  As I discovered, it doesn’t really seem the beeswax is even necessary.

So, after watching a number of different YouTube videos, and the recipe recommended by my future son-in-law, I mixed up the batter.  I simmered the milk with couple dried up vanilla pods, along with some real extract for 10 minutes or so as per the Taste of Artisan instructions – from there I deviated, mixing the flour, eggs, butter, sugar and rum all together, and then adding 1/3 of the simmered milk (pouring through a fine strainer), and whipping until smooth.  I then added the rest and continued stirring until mixed thoroughly.

The next evening I heated up the oven to 475 F, took the batter out of the fridge and gave it a good stir – being careful not to incorporate any air.   I then just melted some butter, and brushed the butter into 8 of the 12 pan cups, then ladled batter into each of the buttered cups – filling them to about 3/4 full.

Into the oven for 15 minutes at 475 F, after which I lowered the temperature to 375F, for another 45 minutes.

Afterwards, I took the pan out of the oven, let it cool for 5 minutes, then flipped the pan over – dumping the delectable delights onto a wire cooling rack – they all popped out perfectly, and none of the dreaded “white butts” commonly referenced on Youtube and various other websites.

 

 

 

The next evening I cooked up the rest of the batter, making 12 more pastries (a little smaller than the first ones – but cups were still about 2/3’s full).  Again, these popped out of the pan with no issues and no “white butts” as well.  Just nice and crispy on the outside, and nice and custardy on the inside!

Chef’s Plate experience

Food

A few weeks ago, we decided to give Chef’s Plate a try.  As the primary cook for the household, I found it tiring trying to come up with ideas of what to make for dinner, and also the challenge of trying to get the appropriate groceries for the week.  As a result, we fell back on take out, and also found ourselves throwing out a lot of food gone bad.

After the initial trial period where you get a bunch of meals for really low prices, we get a two 4 serving meals a week.  Sometimes we just go with what they offer, other times we go into their website and pick our meals.

The quality of the ingredients has been great.  I find their meat quality to be better than anything I can get from our local grocery stores.

A couple times we ran into issues – one week they didn’t deliver until a couple days later, and another time they had omitted the primary ingredient (no salmon for a salmon chowder).  Both times their customer service was very responsive and resolved the issues to our satisfaction.

The box of 2 four serving meals costs around $70 – so each serving is around $9.  About half of what we would spend when ordering out.  The preparation times on the meal cards are reasonably accurate – and are usually around 30 minutes – so not far off from a typical wait time for a DoorDash order.

The meals come with a letter sized card that details what ingredients the meal includes (and qty), and step by step instructions for the preparation.  The cards are great – we save them (and save the repeats for family and friends).  I find them useful for meal ideas without a kit.  The one thing that can be a challenge is finding the appropriate spice blends they use in most of their meals.  These are often the ‘magic’ that makes their meals.  The do provide ingredient lists and recipes for many of their blends (but not all) over on their Facebook page.

The meals are packed in a medium sized  box with each meal individually packed in it’s own recyclable or biodegradable bag.  A third insulated bag contains a well sealed ice block along with any perishable ingredients from either of the meals.

I have a hard time throwing out the boxes – it doesn’t feel right.  Instead, we’ve been saving them.  Having a bunch of uniformly sized boxes is helpful to get things organized.