Long, Strange Trip + turkey kebabs and mint chutney

It wasn't strange at all, or very long. I journeyed, among other places, to the land of Lewis and Clark. This was pretty thrilling for someone who grew up playing the Oregon Trail video game at day camp.

Anyway, prior to this, I held my first Brooklyn Test Kitchen: Cheeseburger-a-thon at my apartment. The goal was to create a beef burger with blue cheese. The result was a turkey kebab with a strange cheese "sauce." Or rather, because the cheese was parve -- made with vegan ingredients -- a "cheese" sauce. Also, because it was the nine days -- the period of time before Tisha B'Av, a mournful day of fasting on the Hebrew calendar, and a time when one typically, or traditionally, does not eat meat -- I couldn't find beef anywhere in all of Brooklyn. Only ground turkey.

In the end, I made delicious kebabs, served with sour cream and mint chutney. The kebabs, or sausages, are quite hearty and delicious, and taste like red meat (but for way less calories or environmental impact, for that matter). The "cheese" sauce is still in the test area; I'm going to experiment with nutritional yeast for the next go-round.

Kebabs/Sausage Patties

1 pound ground turkey
1 egg
2 - 3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
handful minced dill
handful minced chives
pinch ground ginger
2 tbs (or more) chicken curry (powdered)
1/4 cup breadcrumps (optional -- for a Pesach version, leave it out; the worcestershire sauce too)
splash worcstershire sauc

Mix all of those ingredients in a bowl -- but do not overmix. Then form into very small - about 1.5 - 2 inch patties -- and grill, either outside, on a stove-top pan, or in the broiler. Truly delicious. I served them with Tofutti sour cream, which is parve. To go with it, you can also whip up a super fast mint chutney.

Chutney courtesy Epicurious.com
1 cup packed fresh mint leaves
4 scallions, coarsely chopped
1 small fresh green serrano chile, coarsely chopped (1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons), including seeds
1 large garlic clove, chopped
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
3/4 teaspoon salt

Blend ingredients a food processor, and you're done.

The take-home of the whole event was that cooking is so much like writing. You think you're going to make one thing, and in the end it's something else. The trick of it is to figure out what you've done, and what to do with it.

Nightmare of Passover

Pesach flummoxed my mother. She'd never learned the 'right' way to do it, and so relied on an outdated and somewhat ridiculous copy of the Kosher Cookbook for Sabbath and Holidays. I remember a Pesach cake she made falling to the floor and crumbling into a million pieces. Like sand. When it happened, she threw the knife across the room. It hit the breakfront, left a dent. Grabbed her Tictacs - remember those? it was the 80s and she'd recently stopped smoking - and ran out, slamming the front door.

She came back, of course. And the cake would've been bad anyway. But she never tried to make another Pesadich dessert again. So when I got older, I did. Felt the shame/necessity of making up where my mother hadn't been able to do enough. The cake is sufficiently tasty to prepare even when it isn't Pesach. Or for people who say 'Passover' instead of 'Pesach' and who wouldn't give a crap if you served them leaven. Most important, it works for your fundamentalist mother-in-law, assuming your kitchen is properly kashered, of course.

In France, they call it fondant. We'll call it flourless chocolate cake.

Recipe after the jump.