A couple of years ago, I made some eggplant sliders as appetizers for a foodie group we belong to. They weren't bad, although the cook was on someone else's grill, so it wasn't very comfortable. This week, we had a couple of nice sized eggplants on hand from our final CSA basket of the season (until fall, just too damned hot to grow that stuff here in the middle of summer), so I decided to go all the way to burgers this time.
For the sauce, I did a simple raita with cucumber from the CSA. The trick to keep the raita from going too liquidy is to grate the cucumber and then place it between paper towels to press out water. Don't be afraid to apply a fair amount of pressure and change the paper out at least once. I mixed a half cup of plain yogurt with a third of a cup of the pressed cucumber. I added the juice and zest from half a lime and a quarter teaspoon of ground cumin. That got chilled an hour or two before the cook.
For the eggplant, I made slices about a half inch thick. I hit them with cooking spray and then dusted with a mix of equal parts grocery store chili powder and MMD. So here are the "burger" patties ready to go on the grill:
I set the grill up for direct cooking at 350 with a couple of chunks of pecan. They went ten minutes on each side, with some corn on the grill at the same time.
Here's a cooked eggplant slice:
I buttered and lightly toasted some burger buns. I enjoyed my burgers with the last CSA plum tomato, lettuce and the raita. My wife had one that way and her second one was just eggplant and raita on the bun. She said she liked that one better. The eggplant gets to a really creamy consistency on the inside and all the flavors work well for me. Back when I did the sliders, I also provided some chipotle crema with them and that worked well, too.
Assembling burgers:
And time to dig in:
I'll tag jfmorris here in case this is something that Yvonne could try eventually.
For the sauce, I did a simple raita with cucumber from the CSA. The trick to keep the raita from going too liquidy is to grate the cucumber and then place it between paper towels to press out water. Don't be afraid to apply a fair amount of pressure and change the paper out at least once. I mixed a half cup of plain yogurt with a third of a cup of the pressed cucumber. I added the juice and zest from half a lime and a quarter teaspoon of ground cumin. That got chilled an hour or two before the cook.
For the eggplant, I made slices about a half inch thick. I hit them with cooking spray and then dusted with a mix of equal parts grocery store chili powder and MMD. So here are the "burger" patties ready to go on the grill:
I set the grill up for direct cooking at 350 with a couple of chunks of pecan. They went ten minutes on each side, with some corn on the grill at the same time.
Here's a cooked eggplant slice:
I buttered and lightly toasted some burger buns. I enjoyed my burgers with the last CSA plum tomato, lettuce and the raita. My wife had one that way and her second one was just eggplant and raita on the bun. She said she liked that one better. The eggplant gets to a really creamy consistency on the inside and all the flavors work well for me. Back when I did the sliders, I also provided some chipotle crema with them and that worked well, too.
Assembling burgers:
And time to dig in:
I'll tag jfmorris here in case this is something that Yvonne could try eventually.
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