hamburger, poached egg

Late dinner over here, Boy, those cinnamon buns down there in the previous post sure did a number on my delicate sucrose-sensitive system. 

Not!

Ate one and a half and didn't feel a thing. It's just that it took a couple of hours to nibble away at them and I wasn't hungry for the rest of the day. So the moral to that story is ...  well, I guess there isn't a moral to that, and nothing at all to be learned. 

There is a word for hamburgers moistened with bread and milk but I do not know what it is. Possibly Wet Betty. Moist Betty. Maybe Sloppy Betty. Could be Betty the Big Scaz. 

My own black bean bread. 

My milk ↓.  Not really. 

The thing is, I'm tired of fried burgers coming out all tight and dense and dead cow burgery. I've tried adding olive oil to overly lean meat, I've tried steaming, I've tried adding water to the mixture. All of those things do have a minimal effect in keeping them moist, but it needs more. 

A heavy douse of vinegar and a heavy hand with the salt. I mean, why mess around? The egg was cooked off the heat, and the state of the yolk carefully monitored while the burgers fried in another pan. Then the egg was lifted out of the acidulated brine with a serving spoon and the spoon was used to trim off  the extra albumen. Because neatness counts. Counts for what is not exactly clear to me but it must count for something somewhere.

Two burgers were formed, thicker than the original two burgers obviously. A dent was pressed into their centers to counteract shrinkage. The burgers were steamed to finish with Marsala, a handy kind of wine to have on hand  refrigerated because it doesn't oxidize like ordinary plain table wine. It's a little bit syrupy too it seems. I like it a lot. The steaming hastened the final phase of cooking, deglazed the pan, and with a pat  of butter formed a tablespoon of sauce that was poured over the hamburger shown. 

The greens are some kind of chard prepared much earlier with bacon and Brussels sprouts. I'm actually surprised it was still useful, it was made so long ago. But nothing was growing on it and it didn't smell funny, so what the heck. Living dangerously over here. What? I'm a bachelor, it's what we do. Now it's finally gone. 

Aerogarden basil. 

Conclusion: 

I do like this bread and milk hamburger thing a lot. Woefully non-kosher. The texture appeals to me and it is exactly what I am aiming for. But I can see that it will not appeal to everybody. Especially dedicated carnivore types who demand 100% meat in their meat. 

Oh Man, this reminds me of something I saw on a youtube clip of Johnny Carson. Apparently McDonald's used to keep track of how many millions of hamburgers were sold and advertised it on their signage until the amount became so ridiculously high it would cause more concern for the company's effect on the environment than it would serve as a point of vain advertising braggadocio. Plus they probably could no longer keep up with any degree of accuracy. Just say billions. So anyway, referring to that sign Carson cheerfully chirped as if bragging, "200,000,000 hamburgers sold! *comedic pause*  And they already used one cow."