Grilled lamb burgers sweet potato chips and all the fixings

Having moved from vegetarian to marketarian, we have discovered a new favorite dish: lamb burgers. Mince an onion and saute it in a little fat, and then mix it with ground meat, maybe some minced herbs, and an egg yolk. Actually, don't use an egg yolk: for an extra treat, swap the egg for a dollop of homemade mayonnaise. Then form in to patties, dredge with flour if you like, and fry in the same pan you cooked the onions in, or grill.

Don't have homemade mayonnaise? You should. Our very easy recipe is from the great Julia Child: in the food processor, mix one egg plus two yolks, a heaping teaspoon of prepared mustard, a little salt, and a tablespoon of acid, for about thirty seconds. Then, with the machine running, slowly drizzle in between one and two cups oil (use a good oil, but it's fine to mix: I usually combine olive and peanut oils).

Our always side with burgers are sweet potatoes, in some sort of fry/chip form. Slice some sweet potatoes, one large or two small per person, and toss with olive oil, salt, paprika, and cumin. Then bake or grill them. Grilled sweet potatoes are lovely, and give you a chance to warm up the grill before cooking the meat.

For fixings, open some jars of homemade pickles and ketchup. For a quick dill pickle, clean some jars, and add a clove or two of garlic, cleaned sliced cucumber (be sure to remove the area right next to the flower, as it contains enzymes that make the pickle lose its crispness), and a tablespoon or so of dill seed, mustard seed, black pepper, and maybe a bay leaf or some fennel seed. Combine equal parts water and distilled vinegar, and maybe a third as much non-iodized salt (the iodine can throw off the pickling), over the stove until bubbling and the salt has dissolved. Pour the hot brine over the cucumbers, and either seal the jars in the canner or keep in the refrigerator. If you prefer sweet pickles, add plenty of sugar to the brine, and instead of garlic and dill use sliced onion and some whole cloves (keep the mustard). Ketchup is a bit more involved: cook tomatoes, onions, and a bell pepper with a bag of whole spices (allspice, celery seed, etc.); drain; puree; add vinegar, sugar, salt, paprika; cook until the correct consistency.

Slice up some cheese, a garden tomato, and some red onion. We usually make our own burger buns (your favorite whole wheat dough works well), but this time we had an "herb slab" from Acme Bread. Serve burgers with a hearty red wine on the sweeter side.

Grilled dinner: corn, tuna, and summer squash

Camping: Grilled zucchini and tuna with tomato-onion salsa

Camping: roasted sweet potatoes and bean burgers with all the fixings

Bean burgers

One trick to making good bean burgers is to serve them with home-made pickles and home-made buns. For the burgers themselves, first mix the dry ingredients well: salt and pepper, a little clove, a fair amount of curry, lots of nutritional yeast, and more than you think really necessary wheat gluten. Then add the wet ingredients: cooked beans (canned or soaked-and-boiled), cooked brown rice (processed in the food processor), and grated carrot. Work the batter a bit, probably adding more dry ingredients until the consistency is good and the gluten has made everything sticky. Coat in a little olive oil, and cook through (you don't really want any raw gluten left) on a hot grill.

Nicoise salad with grilled tuna

S came over shortly before leaving for Austin, where she has now started law school. We made Niçoise salad, one of our favorite dinners, as readers of this blog know well. This salad featured grilled tuna in the center, surrounded by cooked shrimp, hard boiled egg, grated carrot, olives and capers, and fava beans, cherry tomatoes, and green beans all from the garden. S brought a nice bottle of wine, the merlot by Butner Cellars. We finished dinner with a blackberry pie.

Nicoise salad with grilled tuna

Portobello burgers with grilled sweet potato fries

The very best sweet potato fries we've made were these, on the grill. Slice sweet potatoes for large fries, toss with olive oil, salt, paprika, and cumin, and grill. Then grill portobello mushrooms, which you have sprinkled with olive oil in which you have mashed rosemary. Add sliced jack or cheddar cheese, and serve on home-made whole-wheat buns. Assemble the burgers with sliced red onion, home-grown tomato, and home-made bread-and-butter pickles.

Prawn-and-cheese kabobs

Begin by shelling and deveining the large prawns. Carefully slice a small red onion into large pieces. Rinse a basket of large cherry tomatoes. Cut one package of the wonderful-tasting but expensive halloumi cheese into cubes.

Assemble skewers, alternating the various ingredients. Heat up your grill, and cook the kabobs until the prawns are pink throughout. The cheese might just start to melt, but it holds to remarkably high temperatures. Meanwhile, dress arugula in lemon juice and olive oil.

Divide the salad between the plates. When the kabobs are cooked, transfer them carefully (so that the softened cheese does not come off) on top of the salad. Serve with red wine or retsina.

Grilled summer squash and sea bass with pesto

By now, I am almost two months behind in posting meals, but I'll try to catch up soon. For my birthday, I received a gas-fired barbecue, and many times in July we ate outside. For our first grilled dinner, we cooked summer squash, and then sea bass, and we topped the sea bass with a pesto of garlic and parsley and thyme from the garden.