Dinner: Making the Old, New Again

Bear here... Once again trying to blog about dinner experiments before Theresa gets home. (So we can eat and still have time to put the blog on the internet thingie afterwards.)

This adventure is about finding an older idea, unleashing your inner Cook of Anarchy, and making something worth eating. My idea is from the cookbook pictured below, written in 1960, the Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices by George Leonard Herter and Berthe E. Herter.

I'm making the California "Shoshonian Linguistics Indians" style meat paddies.

Apparently those folks didn't hunt so well so when they got meat they gave it special treatment- they put a piece of meat on a flat, clean rock and pounded it to a pulp. They used 2 parts mashed meat to 1 part cooked & mashed mesquite beans. (I am thinking they wanted to stretch the meat as much as possible too.)

The author, George, recommended using canned pork and beans and mashing them instead. Theresa made us spicy refried beans to eat for our lunches this week, so that's what I used along with a pound of ground beef from a local farm.

Bear's Inner Cook of Anarchy was not yet appeased, though. Time for some fries. I used the potatoes we bought from the farmer's market last week (Yep, they're purple). First, I mixed together in small bowl around 1/4 cup of olive oil, 1 crushed clove of garlic, and a little salt, then leave it to sit on the counter (the longer the oil sits with the garlic, the more garlic flavor there will be). Next, cut potatoes in wedges (as shown in the picture). Then boil the potatoes until partially cooked, 15-20 minutes. Drain the potatoes, then pour the oil over the potatoes while the potatoes are still hot. Mix well.

Make the burger into paddies.

​Now that everything is ready to cook, wait for the wife that knows how to make killer salads to get home, then fire up the grill.

I'm grilling the burgers, the buns, and the potatoes. Theresa is making a salad with mixed lettuce and the first, fresh, amazing tomatoes of the season from our CSA. Unless she decides to go for a cucumber and tomato and basil salad.

​Dinner should be awesome...

If you want to reduce your offerings to the grilling Gods, use a grate to cook the potatoes. If you want to keep from burning the offerings, keep a better eye on the food than I did...

Theresa went all out, as you can see.

Time to feast! Bean burger dressed and undressed

Closing thoughts: Yummy! Defenately has room fore more experimentation.

Type at ya later...