Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Black Bean Burgers

I've decided to try developing a recipe for black bean burgers. Here's my first go at it.
Ingredients:

  • 12 oz dried black beans; or 4.5 C soaked beans.
  • 1 onion
  • 1 bunch of celery
  • 1 large carrot
  • 3 t soy sauce
  • 3 t garlic juice (or 3 cloves of garlic)
  • 2 t cumin
  • 0.5 C pinot noir, or other red wine
  • 3.5 C minute oatmeal

Instructions

If starting from dried beans, soak overnight. Discard the soaking water, or else these burgers will be the gift that keeps on giving.

Put beans in a large pot, cover in water; you should use about twice as much water as there are beans. Bring to a boil for 10 minutes, then simmer covered for two hours.

Chop the onions and celeries, shred the carrot in a food processor, and fry in a pan with olive oil.

When the onions, celery, and carrots are done, puree them in the food processor.

In a large container (a kitchenaid mixer bowl is best!) add the puree, and then add the beans, reserving the boiling water.

Add cumin, garlic, wine, soysauce, and oatmeal. Mix with a mixing paddle until it all clumps together. Add more oatmeal if needed.

Let it rest for a while, maybe 15 minutes to an hour, so that it sets.

Shape into patties, and fry on a lightly oiled pan. Makes about 12 burgers.
Notes

The cumin was just right. They taste like they could use more salt, so next time I'll increase the amount of soy sauce. If you serve with ketchup the flavors blend very nicely, though, so salt would not be necessary. Also, next time I will not puree the carrots; I think it will look better to see the shreddings in the burger.

Friday, January 27, 2006

Genesis 3:6

She took...and she ate: so simple the act, so hard its undoing. God will taste poverty and death before `take and eat' become verbs of salvation.
-- Derek Kidner, Tyndale Old Testament Commentary on Genesis

Monday, January 16, 2006

Stardust@Home - pre-registration

Stardust@Home - pre-registration Many of you have probably heard of the probe that returned to earth the other day containing comet samples. That probe also contains (we think!) interstellar dust. But the estimate is that there will be about 40 grains.... so the UCB people are calling for volunteers to look at the scanned images of the aerogel returned from the probe to help them hunt for the grains. So if you've always wanted to do some NASA science, here's your big chance!