Bloody Mary Burgers

By Paul Briand

This week's recipe comes courtesy of my son David. I went to bed not knowing what this week's featured recipe would be, then woke up to an email from David that guided me to the Bloody Mary Burgers.

He actually wrote to suggest I start posting some of my recipes on Tastespotting.com. It's a great suggestion and I will post some future recipes there. But my problem this week was that all my creative energies had been devoted in other areas outside the kitchen, so I had no recipes to create, so I went to Tastespotting instead in search of a fun recipe and happened upon this burger recipe that is accompanied by a Cucumber and Avocado Salsa.

I was amused by the Bloody Mary Burger name, derived from some of the ingredients found in a Bloody Mary cocktail -- Tabasco, Worcestershire, horseradish, celery. No tomato juice, but there is ketchup. No vodka, but I suppose a creative chef out there could find a way to make it work.

Ingredients
1 pound ground beef
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 tablespoon Tabasco
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons horseradish
1/2 small yellow onion, minced
1 teaspoon celery salt
1/4 cup bread crumbs

Directions
1. Mix all ingredients together in large bowl;
2. Make four patties and grill until desired doneness.

Serve and top with Cucumber and Avocado Salsa as follows:

Ingredients
1 cucumber, sliced in half, seeds scooped out and large dice
1 diced ripe avocado
2 scallions sliced
Dressing:
Zest and juice of a lime
Splash of red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon olive oil
Handful of chopped cilantro
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions
1. Whisk dressing ingredients together and stir in to the cucumber, avocado and scallion mixture;
2. Allow to chill in refrigerator to let everything marry and serve on the burgers.

Hamburger Stroganoff

In the Briand Special recipe that I posted here a few weeks ago, I said it was the first thing I learned to cook, something my father created by happenstance. But no man -- nor woman, nor child -- can live on Briand Specials alone.

So it fell to my mother Marge to refine my cooking skills, a necessary chore back in college when I went off as a first semester junior to work as a full-time newspaper intern in Gloucester, Mass., for the Daily Times. I would be living on my own, cooking on my own, and my mother felt the need to arm me with some of her dinner recipes.

When I think back on Mom's Hamburger Stroganoff, I have more vivid memories of it as a leftover than I do as the dinner main course. This was back in high school in the mid-1960s and I remember during the weekends, after sleeping through most of the morning that I would get out of bed in search of something with a breakfast element but had the greater substance of lunch.

On those lucky occasions when there was leftover stroganoff I would butter two pieces of toast, heat up some the leftovers and top the toast with the stroganoff. My interpretation of chipped beef on toast? I'm not sure, other than hunger, what drove the interest of having reheated stroganoff on buttered toast, but I remember it being a great weekend brunch when it was available.

Ingredients
1 Vadalia onion, sliced
Two garlic cloves, crushed
1 8-ounce package of sliced mushrooms
1 - 1 1/4 lb hamburger
Flour
Ketchup
1 cup beef broth
Sour cream, two tablespoons
Sherry

Instructions
1. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat
2. Add onion and crushed garlic cloves
3. As onion starts getting limp add mushrooms
4. Add and brown hamburger
5. Once the meat is fully cooked drain off excess fat
6. Add a generous dusting of flour and stir
7. Squirt a generous helping of ketchup into the mixture and stir - the mixture should wet but not runny
8. Stir in the cup of beef broth and adjust heat to low, stirring as the mixture thickens
9. Add two generous tablespoons of sour cream and stir through
10. Add 3 teaspoons of the Sherry.

Serves 4 to 6.

It works well without the Sherry, but not as well ... something about the sweetness of the sherry with the hint of sour cream.

I've served it with a variety of starchy sides -- over egg noodles (which you see most often), or over rice, or with baked potato (you can't let the rest of the sour cream go to waste after all). And leftovers over toast? Why not.