I'm sure you had guessed I was playing with the "cultural" word
Whopper. Good! Well - this is my anti-establishment
veggie burger brioche, with
arugula lime salad. I had fun doing it: the process reminded me of making a Filipino luscious
lumpia (fried egg roll) filling, a recipe I learned from the
Lumpia Shack at the Brooklyn Flee Market in Dumbo (not that I had actually made one; just transitively).
THE FILLING (half a cup of the following, plus some): minced sweet onions, cooked chunk potatoes, cooked carrots, cooked rice, rough ground toasted pumpkin seeds, "bread crumbs" (I used some leftover Ecuadorian cheese empanadas with their lardy crust),
plus some (more than a cup of) minced mixed Mesclun salad greens (no, I don't have Kale, sorry; actually I purposely didn't want it - I want freshness not bitterness). Oh, don't forget the egg. Two.
In a large bowl, mix fillings together pack like a meat loaf, and break the eggs in last - keep using your hands to integrate well. Salt and pepper and chili flakes it, some olive oil, and oh, yes - Soy Sauce! - about two tbsp, and juice of half a lemon. Form filling into a ball, and let it rest for about an hour in the bowl covered with Saran wrap.
PREPARE SALAD: I only have three ingredients: a bag of washed arugula greens, white onions (cut up into thin half moons) and zest of one lime. The dressing really is the key. (Look for a previous recipe in the blog - good luck; but I guarantee it's there; hint: early last year.) But for this salad, though, I used more measures of fresh lime juice and lemon juice over the wine vinegar, and like my "trademark" dressing, because of the plentiful use of whole spices, it's got an Italian-Mediterranean punch.
WOWGER TIME: Heat up the oven to 375, olive oil a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, form veggie patties (recipe makes 3 enormous wowgers), and when oven heated, stick sheet in for about 35 minutes. Turn oven light on. You obviously had noticed the cheese in the picture. Yes, you need that, too. At the 35th minute when the wowgers are charred deep brown (there's really no preference for "How do you like it done?" with a green burger. Do you really want to eat a "meatloaf" that's pink in the middle? I didn't think you would), melt a very special, high quality cheese, like a slightly moldy/briey kind from the co-op in Middlebury, Vermont called Tomme. In less than 5 minutes, you're done.
TO SERVE: Toast up a thick slice of brioche bread (Agatha and Valentina's; it's becoming my go-to food store these days since moving to Gramercy-Kips Bay, Manhattan from Bushwick, Brooklyn) in butter, both sides, remove baked cheese wowgers from the oven, and turner spoon a wowger perfectly on the bread, and then the other. Cut sandwich in half (diagonal), and assuming you had successfully made the arugula lime salad, tong a generous some over the plate with your
burger (oh, did I use the "Right" word), look at the picture for inspiration - and there you have it liberals!
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