from 5/9/2007

Last night the Sprouted Garbanzo Burgers came to fruition. And, they were delicious and adorable--my favorite combo!

Here's the recipe from Heidi's site (and it's also in her book Super Natural Cooking): http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/001567.html

She tells you to actually use the burger (split in two) as the bun, and I love this idea because I hate having too much bread that obscures the flavor of your burger and toppings. Brilliant!

Plus, in my email exchange with Heidi, she told me to let her know how my burgers come out, so now I have another excuse to email her again. I will try to not be crazy (a la The Alison Bechdel Incident).

I made a minor change to the recipe--I didn't have much cilantro, so I made up for the rest with parsley. Tasty-riffic anyway!

Here are the sprouts in all their full-grown glory:


And, here they are fully realized as dinner with deviled ramp pickled eggs, and topped with avocado, spinach, grated carrot, paprika and a yogurt sauce (just some low-fat plain yogurt with toasted cumin and fennel seeds, a dash of salt, and some minced parsley). And, a bottle of vigonier.

The ramp eggs are TANGY. Like, there's no other word for it. Even as deviled eggs. Seriously tangy. Good, but tangy. I'm not sure I'd make that recipe again, but I am planning on making some pickled beet eggs soon. I love them. Beautiful, delicious and old skool.



And, for dessert we had some homemade vanilla bean-lavender ice cream with fresh mango:


I just sorta winged it with the ice cream because I looked at several recipes, but didn't have all the ingredients for any of the recipes, so I just mixed up some stuff from what I had, and it turned out pretty well! We ate it when it was still kinda soft (like, soft-serve consistency), but it sat up more in the freezer. It's a little icy (due to the soy milk), but it's totally tasty. Here's what I used, but I'll definitely be revising this recipe. I'm thinking mesquite chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. MMMmmm...

4 c. plain soy milk
5 T. powdered milk
2 egg yolks
1 vanilla bean, split open
1 T. dried lavender
a little less than 1/2 c. sugar (you may need more with regular milk, but since the soy milk was already a little sweet, I went light on the sugar)

Mix all ingredients ina saucepan and whisk until uniform. Cook over low heat for about 20 minutes, then let sit on kitchen counter to cool for an hour or two, then strain and put in refrigerator until ready to make ice cream. It must be completely cooled or it'll never get beyond the runny stage. When it's completely cooled, just make ice cream according to the instructions with your ice cream machine

I have a little Donvier Ice Cream Maker that I got years ago at a thrift store. You freeze the canister for at least a day in advance, and then you crank it, but only every couple of minutes. Super easy. If you don't have a machine, don't fear! I found lots of info about making it without a machine with a quick google search. Here's some info: http://www.waitrose.com/food_drink/wfi/cooking/techniques/0207096.asp