MFM again!

It must be about the 5th one by now - I seem to have lost count.

Coming back from our weekend on the farm I was figuring out a menu for the week - well it is one way to fill in the 2.5 hour drive - and came up with burgers for dinner on Monday night. Mmmm, then I remembered it was a meat free day, so decided to make our burgers with Portobello mushrooms instead of your everyday mince. Just for a little twist I gave them a Moroccan inspired rub on top too!

I mixed together some ground cinnamon, chili flakes, cayenne pepper, ground cumin and some salt & pepper and after spraying the mushrooms with some olive oil, I rubbed the top of the mushrooms with said rub.  H'o'M then took them outside and BBQ'd them - absolutely perfectly I might add!

While he was outside getting the BBQ hot and then cooking the mushies, I got some fillings ready for the burgers. To make some sort of dressing/sauce, I mixed yoghurt, lemon juice and mint together, and left them to merge all the flavours as long as possible.

For the burger fixin's, I chopped up a few baby beets, two tomatoes, a cucumber and half a red capsicum. As we love onion in our house, I also caramelised a couple of brown onions using Donna's quick caramelising technique - see I did learn a few things from my Winter challenge.

Then to complete the burger, I grilled a couple of Turkish rolls! Actually the chain market here in our resort town, sells these rolls partially baked, so I first had to bake them in the oven for a few minutes, then I grilled each side for a couple of minutes. I'm not sure they'd taste any good the next day - or indeed even a few hours later -  but for an immediate use, they were terrific!

Of course, I had to add basil pesto to my burger - not so for H'o'M who simply tolerates my slight obsession with pesto. Seriously though what's not to love??? ;-)
I enjoyed these burgers and have to say that although I didn't serve them with curly fries, (which would have definitely put them into the realm of *awesome*) this Portobello burger was better than the one I had at the famous  'Barney's Burgers'  in Rockridge in Oakland CA! 

Unfortunately though, although we've had a few attempts already, it seems H'o'M hasn't totally got the whole point of Meat Free Monday. While outside BBQing the mushrooms, he trickily BBQ'd a sasusage too!!! His theory being that

• it's only a side dish, so doesn't really count 

and

• as it's a sausage there is every chance that there really isn't any meat in it anyway ;-)

Dubious rationalisations at best I'd say!