Take me or leave me? Thai spiced turkey burger weirdness

I love to cook, really I do. Part of that is about choosing new recipes, tweaking old and generally finding my way in the sea of available ingredients. That said, since I came into my own cooking wise in what? 2007 or so, I've changed both the way I cook and eat. For the better, I hope. In 2007 as my old flatmate will testify, I ate a lot of stir fries, made up of salmon or chicken and a shedload of veggies mainly. So this weekend I decided to retro, back to 2007 – the year of the stir fry. Instead of salmon or chicken and dousing the veg in honey and soy I decided to experiment with my protein and make something akin to a spiced turkey burger – equally you could make this in any shape and find a better name for it. I would if I could think of one. Really I would.

It all sounds good so far doesn’t it? But it wasn’t, and it’s not often I blog about something I cook that is a disaster, however, this fits that bill. There are so many things I would do differently about this meal. Oh so many. Here’s the list in fact:

·        The turkey burgers were epically dry – I chose to make these out of turkey for two reasons 1) It’s so much  cheaper than chicken and Asda were out of free range chicken and 2) It’s low fat, and thus good for the diet – but dear lord it was dry. I’ve been wracking my brains to try and find ways to make them less dry but not less diet friendly. I’m failing.

·        Freeze dried noodles do not last for ever. I brought these over from M’s house when he moved. They were off.

·        M doesn’t like coriander. To be fair he didn’t know this, so I didn’t know this but it’s never complimentary when your partner asks why their dinner tastes of Fairy liquid. Epic.

But apparently I’m still blogging it. No, I’m not sure why either.

Unlike most things I cook, you really do need a food processor for this. Or use turkey mince and chop stuff like your life depended on it

Weird turkey burger things: consider this a challenge to make them non disastrous if you will.

3 Turkey breast fillets

Bunch spring onions

3 cloves garlic

Lemongrass, bruised and chopped

1 red chilli, de-seeded and chopped

Thumb sized piece of ginger, grated

Bunch coriander chopped (or not as the case may be)

3 dessert spoons fish sauce

Veg for a stir fry – I used cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, courgettes, edamame beans and beansprouts

2 portions noodles (I usually use rice as they’re my favourite but was being thrifty and using up the ones in the cupboard)

Soy sauce and a splash of honey

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C and put a baking tray in there to heat up too

Whizz the garlic, chilli, ginger, lemongrass and spring onions up in the food processor. Add the turkey and fish sauce and pulse until the mixture starts to come together (you don’t want it too chunky but neither do you want it to look like baby food)

Make these into meatball/ burger/ sausage* (delete as appropriate) shapes using wet or (and I just thought of this) lightly oiled hands.

Take the baking tray out of the oven and put the burger-y things on it, spacing them a little way apart. I made about 12 mini burger sized ones. Return back to the oven and cook for 30 minutes

While they’re cooking, stir fry your veg in a little oil with added garlic, chilli and ginger.

Cook the noodles and stir through the vegetables. Add honey and soy while the pan is on the heat and stir everything through.

Serve with the turkey burger-y things, in bowls. Try to ignore your boyfriend desperately trying to eat them. Also try to ignore the fact that the noodles taste weird and the turkey is dry.

To be fair, if M hadn’t discovered that he hated coriander and the noodles weren’t past their best it would have been really tasty. If a little dry. I would definitely do it again for me. In fact I might make up a batch for the freezer and have them with sweet chilli sauce when M’s away. Oooh! Plan!