Cornelius Honey Wheatgerm Burgers

As promised!

Some time back, found a recipe for wheatgerm burger patties in some cookbook I picked up for maybe 3 dollars at the library book sale. Man, I love those sales. Anyhow, the original recipe actually used toasted wheatgerm but I couldn’t any of that in the supermarkets here. What was discovered though was a bottle of honey wheatgerm, toasted, at only about 5 dollars. Sweet.

But that proved to be a dilemma as we’d get extremely sweet burgers: not right at all. We wouldn’t want sweetened burgers, it’d be way too odd to the taste. So, what I did was to combine this recipe with another one, a carrot cornflakes burger which I’d made not too successfully a year back. Crushed cornflakes (Cornelius! who is looking real buff someday might I add. Soon he’ll be strutting his stuff with a hot chickadee with a fine feather ass.) and honey wheatgerm. Ta-da!

To make 4 servings, beat 2 large eggs in a bowl and stir in 1/2 cup of honey wheatgerm and 1/4 cup of crushed cornflakes, finely chopped onions to taste, rosemary, thyme, finely chopped mushrooms/mock ham/about anything you’d want in the burgers so long as it can be finely chopped or shredded, salt and pepper, few tablespoons full of cheese (I used reduced fat cottage which may or may not be really necessary, not quite sure yet as I’ve made this without the cheese and it tasted fine).

After the mixture is well stirred, shape it into patties – I prefer to make them flat and round. Then, using a non-stick frying pan, put some olive oil (I didn’t bother with the oil actually) and cook the patties on medium heat until both sides turn a slight golden brown. Make sure to poke holes consistently through the patties with a fork when cooking – I didn’t the first time round and it turned out a little mushy on the insides.

Use them or dress them in any way as desired!

With hamburger buns and a salad at the side.

With a prawn salad this time round.

Kit did the dressing and I fried the patties. If anyone could believe it.

We did try making burgers using pre-made, ready-to-cook patties bought from the supermarket before. Yet, Cornelius Wheatgerm burgers felt healthier, less salty and tastier. It’s always a comforting fact to know that one is in charged of one’s diet and health. These burgers aren’t hard to make, an additional 20 minutes of time spent and I get to control my sodium intake and all that.

Nonetheless some pictures from the readymade burgers adventure:

Double patty, with eggs scrambled/omelette, flax seed bread and the pre-requisite X-Files. season 7 I think.

Enjoy!

First Post: Miso Risotto!

We attempted something seriously cute today for Christmas. No, we didn’t try to pose the dogs as elves although, seriously, I would’ve LOVED to see those buggers in green and red, complete with white trimmings. The pointy ears would’ve been wayyyy to easy.

Anyway, there’s still a tub of low-salt miso paste in my fridge – easily available at the local supermarket, comes in 300gm or 500gm, regular, low-salt or organic. We felt like brown rice… so we have it…

BROWN RICE MISO RISOTTO! We love risotto, but why does it always have to be so fattening? So here’s our personal solution – fusion style. Complete vegetarian version, can be altered to be vegan or non-vegetarian, since we altered the original recipe anyway. Wait! There was no original recipe to begin with.

Picture quality is not first grade, as we have yet to purchase a decent camera, and as everyone can now conceive, we aren’t Parisian chefs with an impeccable feel for food display.

Nonetheless, it was delicious!

Items needed (can be altered in almost any way, use some creative imagination!): miso paste to your taste, brown/red cargo rice (we mixed), onions diced, olive oil (or butter or whatever), ground basil leaves, ground black pepper, cheese, peas (we used frozen), broccoli, red bell pepper, 3/4 cup unsweetened soy milk (or non-fat milk), mock meat if desired.

Basically, we cooked the rice with half a tablespoon of miso paste in an electric rice cooker, until the rice is half done, making sure that some water is left behind. Then, in another pot – preferably non-stick -, a tea spoon of olive oil was added and the onions were cooked. We poured in the rice with the water, added another half tablespoon of miso paste, 3/4 cups of soy milk, cheese, ground basil and black pepper and left the mixture to cook, occasionally stirring. When the mixture thickens and most of the water is visibly gone, we stirred in the chopped broccoli, bell pepper, mock meat and peas. We usually prefer broccoli and bell pepper a little raw. Stir it and let it cook until mixture has thickened to a creamy texture.

Set rules and timing aren’t really our thing – we’re no pros. Personally, I feel it is better to let live and see how it turns out. In this case, the Risotto was… YUMMY!!

Anyway, the two meat-less patties at the side are actually creations by us – the Cornelius Wheatgerm Burger patties. But, that is for another post in time to come.

This version of risotto is actually healthy, relatively low in fat and delicious (to us, for sure). Besides, miso is supposed to be good for health, or so I’ve just read in some book earlier.

All right.

Here’s to vegetarians in the world: Cheers!