Turmeric and Twine

With Halloween coming up so soon, I’ve been spending a lot of my free time working on my costume (posts on that to come soon!). Unfortunately, because of the impending destruction of Hurricane Sandy, I might be all dressed up with nowhere to go. Oh Sandy, you’re such a costume block. 

Hurricane Sandy is supposed to reach New York tomorrow evening. We have been warned about possible flooding, power outages and very high winds. There is a possibility that we will lose power for about a week. Eww.

My area of the Berkshires is just outside of the affected region and hopefully shouldn’t be hit too hard. My mum has informed me that our water is connected to the electricity, so if the power goes out, we’ll have no running water. Eww squared. Being in a wooded area, trees fall often. The biggest threat to us that Sandy will throw our way is falling trees. We’ll see how that goes.

My transformation recipe this week was inspired by the extra baked tilapia (with a gorgeous tamari, Dijon, garlic and ginger sauce) that I had hanging out in my fridge. Tilapia is a flakey white fish – delicate in flavour and not too fishy. It easily gets overcooked and disappointingly dry, which no one is fond of. I needed to find a way to make the texture more appealing.

 

Quinoa provided some answers to my query. The chenopod quinoa is often confused as a grain due to its grain-like appearance. Actually, it is closely related to beets, spinach and tumbleweeds. Light and unique in flavour, quinoa provides many nutrients like phosphorus, iron and calcium.

I wasn’t concerned about the quinoa overpowering the fish, so I made them into burgers.

Spicy Tilapia Quinoa Burgers Crusted With Almond

Ingredients

• 2-3 leftover filets of tilapia
• 2 cups of cooked quinoa
• ½ cup oil cured black olives (kalamata will also work)
• ½ cup dried cranberries
• 1 or 2 jalapeños
• 2 small green bell peppers
• ¼ cup fresh basil
• 2 small carrots (about 1 cup)
• 1 cup pickles (2 large spears)
• 1 cup spinach or arugula
• 1 cup onion
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp tamari
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp fresh ginger
• ½ to 1 tsp salt
• crushed almonds (about a cup)

Directions

Preheat oven at 400ºF/200ºC/Gas mark 6

In a bowl, flake the filets into small pieces and add the quinoa.

In a food processor, blend all of the ingredients except the fish, quinoa and crushed almonds. Blend until there are no big chunks.

Mix blended contents with the fish and quinoa.

Form the mix into burgers and coat them with the crushed almonds. Lay your burgers on a lightly oiled pan.

Place in the oven and allow them to bake for about 30 minutes. They should be brown on the outside and not threaten to fall apart if moved.

Immediately place a burger on toast with avocado and alfalfa sprouts and devour.

Makes 8-10 burgers.