Beet Burgers

Our eight year old Noah had his first overnight camp experience last night.  It really was his first night away from home without either of his parents.  Thursdays at Camp Calleva the kids spend a night under the stars.  Noah is sleeping in a field with the horses they have been riding on for the past few days.  He is always up for any adventure and was particularly excited about this one.  In fact, much more excited than we were.  In addition to missing and worrying (unnecessarily) about him, our biggest challenge was packing enough food for him for two days. Since camp isn’t totally accommodating for the vegan diet, we needed to prepare two lunches, dinner, and breakfast that could fit in a small cooler and stay fresh for two days.

Once we got Noah out the door, my thoughts, as usual, turned to what to make for dinner. Noah is usually the driving force behind our dinner selection.  He is down right exhausting sometimes with his conviction so we usually bend to his taste.  I  generally give into his choice since he is always very enthusiastic about what we make and most importantly, he loves our food.  He is a great diner.  He eats slowly and deliberately and always makes sure that spice, flavor and what ever accompanies a dish is just right.  Since we all remain at the table until everyone is finished eating, his little brother Sasha sometimes falls asleep at the table.  Noah is always the last to finish.  He loves to eat and converse.  He also never likes to miss a proper meal and regardless of the hour, he wants to sit and take his time.  Not always the best for a school night with multiple activities.

We might have created this monster by exposing him to four hour meals when he was four months old.  We brought him on a trip to Europe as a baby and had him sit in our laps for long multi-course meals.  Everyone thought we were insane to subject him and us to this, but we wanted to dine and we weren’t going to let him ruin our chance to have amazing Parisian meals.  They also didn’t seem to frown on the public breast-feeding which allowed him to dine with us.  Throughout his childhood we maintained family dinnertime and to this day we only eat as a family.

With no Noah at the table, I decided to make beet burgers.  Noah likes roasted beets in their pure form, but isn’t a fan of them in anything else.  Sasha likes beets and beet greens and I decided to turn a beet rice dish into burgers.  Not that I ever care about simulating meat, but this really looked like a rare burger when cooked.  We never go for the fake meat stuff.  No Tofurkey at our Thanksgiving and no simulated duck at our chineese meals.  I really feel like if you want to eat meat you should eat meat.  Not a fan of tricking my kids or myself.  We are veggies and eat veggies and at some point if my kids want to eat meat they will.

So in the food processor, I put our loosely called beet risotto into the food processor.  The mix contained brown rice, beets, beet greens, peas, onions, scapes and white beans.  I blended this with cornflower to give it a little structure that allowed me to form it into patties.  I then put the patties on the grill to slow cook.  I also made potato chips from the bigger new potatoes and put them on the grill coated in grape seed oil, salt and pepper.  I used the same seasoning for the first of the local bi-color corn from Twin Springs and grilled as well.  Since grill space was a premium, I squeezed in a few burger buns that I shaped from the dough I always keep in fridge and grilled some spring onions for the topping.  For the sauce we made some guacamole with Mediterranean cucumbers to add some crunch.  I totally screwed up and realized after eating way to much that I forgot to slice the most amazing yellow tomatoes ever that also made their  first appearance at the Twin Spring’s market this week.  It would have been a good addition to the burger, and I will make sure to include  with the leftovers.  To accompany the barbecue, I opened a vintage 1985 Alain Robert Champagne.  It was rich and delicious with the burgers and we toasted Noah’s adventure.