Piquant

Spicy turkey burgers with guacomole - low fat summer recipe

Summer time means firing up the grill and slapping the meat over the flames.

Meat is king here at Casa Maria.

But I want to cut the fat a little, make my summer meals on the grill a little lighter and healthier.

I can't do without a burger, but I can make it a bit easier on the system. Amazingly,  I don't have to give up flavor while I'm cutting the fat.

Bye-bye beef and hello ground turkey!  Hasta la vista mayonnaise and hola, guacamole!  These two simple swaps are flavorful - especially when you put a strategic few add-ins in the ground turkey mixture.

Ground turkey is significantly lower in fat, nearly half of the 24 grams of fat and one-third fewer calories than the 300 calories found in four ounces of cooked lean ground beef.

Guacamole is far less evil than mayonnaise when it comes to condiments - and it packs in some terrific nutrients every body can use. One tablesppon of mayonnaise has a whopping 90 calories and adds 10 grams of fat with zero nutritional value while a similar size serving of guacamole contains roughly half the calories and fat while providing a source for Vitamins, B,C, and E.

My stomach feels flatter already!

This meal is quick, easy and bursting with flavor.  Add a side of sweet Silver Queen corn and life is nearly perfect.

Spicy Turkey Burgers with Guacamole

Ingredients

• 3 pounds ground turkey
• 1/4 cup seasoned bread crumbs
• 1/4 cup finely diced onion
• 2 egg whites, lightly beaten
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
• 2 tablespoons chipoltle salsa
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Directions

1. In a large bowl, mix ground turkey, seasoned bread crumbs, onion, egg whites, parsley, garlic, chipoltle salsa, salt, and pepper. Form into 12 patties.
2. Cook the patties in a medium skillet over medium heat, turning once, to an internal temperature of 180 degrees F (85 degrees C).

Serve on toasted rolls (I like Challah rolls) with guacamole and grated Asadero cheese or substitute Muenster, Fontina or Monterey Jack.

Cook's Country $25,000 recipe contest

Dig out the well-worn recipe file.  Your grandma's secret icebox cake recipe might be worth $25,000.

Cook'sCountry.com is sponsoring another Lost Recipe contest. Entries due September 1, 2010.

The editors are looking for recipes of another era—simply great family heirloom recipes handed down through the generations—from appetizers, soups, and sides to main courses, cookies, and desserts.

The test kitchen will choose the very best of all the recipes and stories to include in a forthcoming book to be published in Fall 2011. In addition to the grand prize winner ($25,000), four additional winners will each receive $1,000 (and all winners will be profiled in Cook’s Country magazine).

Entries must include an original recipe and should include an essay of no more than 250 words that explains the origins and/or history of the recipe and why the recipe is important to you and your family.

Enter here.

Bring on the figs with homemade ricotta!

This recipe combines three of my favorite tastes treats - figs, honey and cheese.  Ah!

Zabar's recipe blogs present food fans opportunities to cook with some of the best recipes around, featuring chefs Lidia Bastianich and Edward Brown as well as food experts Ina Garten and Mark Bittman.

Today's featured recipe comes from Timeless Entertaining: Four Generations of Creative Kosher Cuisine.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to live near the fantastic food emporium, Zabar's, but thanks to technology, you can bring a bit of Zabar's into your home kitchen every day.

Hail Caesar - salad recipe Cardini dressing maker's original

Of course an Italian dreamed up the Caesar salad.  That he was an Italian living in Mexico makes the story more interesting.

If you've ever seen Cardini salad dressings on the shelves while browsing the supermarket, then you've seen the by-product of Cesare Cardini's original invention, the Caesar salad. It's said that Cardini's original recipe had no anchovies but relied on Worcestershire sauce for its distinctive slightly salty and savory flavor.

Since its creation in the 20s, the Caesar salad has seen numerous transformations with endless recipes available to try and to tweak. It's hard, if not impossible, to find Caesar salad made table side. Too many restrictions are placed on the use of raw egg due to the fear of salmonella.

Some have substituted coddled eggs, but I remain a purist and live dangerously, I suppose. When making Caesar dressing, I use the freshest eggs I can find and wash the shells thoroughly.  Since hens lay their eggs through a "vent" or passageway shared by their intestines and salmonella bacteria is transmitted through fecal matter, this is a pretty important consideration.

Toss a head of romaine and you'll hit a recipe for Caesar salad.

There are updated versions with grilled chicken or grilled shrimp, and some like the one I made last night feature my favorite fruit, the avocado.

You may be hard-pressed to find a Caesar with egg or anchovies in restaurants, which I find depressing - almost as sad as the limp, overdressed salads topped with a few nondescript croutons that are passing as the famed Caesar.

Below is an eggless recipe, which is tasty, but really would benefit from the creamy emulsification created by the addition of a raw egg.  But, in my house, we have one person is afraid of raw egg consumption, so we made this version to suit her palate.

Eggless Caesar Dressing

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

juice of one lemon, about a quarter cup

1clove garlic, mashed

6 anchovy fillets

1/4 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano

salt and pepper to taste

In a blender or food processor, combine all ingredients and pulse until smooth.  May be kept in the refrigerator for two to three days.

Free Krispy Kreme: Friday is National Doughnut Day

What a deal-io! Free doughnuts, yours for the asking. Yumm-io.

Pig: King of the Southern Table pork recipes head to tail

Two of my beloved sayings involve a favorite food source and Southern comfort food -- the humble pig and the fruit of its loins, if you will.

Root hog or die.  This phrase is never far from my mind in times of crisis. Simply put, you must do whatever it takes to survive in this world. 

Take a bite of that barbecue and let me kiss them greasy lips. This quote needs no real explanation other than this: certain foods act as an aphrodisiac.

All this talk of survival and sex is one way of introducing yet another of my favored pastimes - reading cookbooks about foods I adore. While I enjoy beef and chicken, it's the other white meat that I truly enjoy for its versatility and for its long history on spits and grills the world over.

Fellow Southerner James Villas, a culinary expert who was food and wine editor for Town & Country magazine for 27 years, recently published PIG: King of the Southern Table, the complete compendium of pork cookery. 

PIG (Wiley, May 2010, 424 pp, US$34.95) covers the familiar recipes - devoting a lengthy chapter solely to the often controversial preparation of barbecue, its sauces and rubs - as well as the obscure (to some) recipes featuring variety and specialty meat, the polite term for the organ meats and odd bits often deemed unfit for the table. 

In true Southern fashion, Villas, a two-time recipient of James Beard Journalism awards with 15 cookbook titles to his credit, leaves nothing but the squeal uncooked.  He included recipes for Tennis Ball Salad with Salt Pork-Buttermilk Dressing (the precursor to the Iceberg wedge slathered in roquefort dressing), Bacon Waffles, and Carolina Pork and Sweet Potato Pie with Biscuit Batter Crust.

While his recipes were mostly familiar and traditional, the kind of country comfort food you'd find dished up everyday as well as for Sunday dinner, there were a few which I'd never heard of such as the intriguing Texarcana Pork and Bean Pie with Cornpone Topping or the savory  Baked Pork Loin with Fig-Citrus Stuffing.

Villa's recipe for Hog's Head Stew reminded me of New Year's Day when I was 12 and my father insisted I help cook a hog's head as part of the traditional dinner celebrating the first day of the new calendar. Villas  is correct; it is an acquired taste.  

For the uninitiated, the cookbook author includes a Southern Pig Primer: From Head to Tail, with delectable descriptions of the choice parts of the pig and their uses as well as A Southern Pig Glossary, with brief and delicious descriptions of the delicacies prepared from pig.

PIG is more than just a collection of pork recipes; it tells a tale of culture, cuisine and technique through  its memoir-laced introduction and well-versed headnotes. As an added treat, he includes factual tidbits and pig lore, referred to throughout as Pig Pickin's.

Lucy Schaeffer's food photography is a luscious side dish to the main course.