Spicy Lamb Burgers

Saturday night, in a surpassing gesture toward adulthood, I decided to update my operating system. You know, install all those niggling updates it’s constantly pestering me about: tightening up the operating system….honing safety and security….something about email…plus improving all those programs I’ve never opened, like GarageBand.

I set the update uploading, or downloading, or whatever the hell it does, and went off to binge watch the X-Files with John. A couple hours later, John glanced into my study.

“Your computer is done.”

Done is the operative adjective here. Whatever OSX El Capitan version installed killed my finder, taking out other useful features, like proper i-photo functionality right along with it.

There is upside to this. I did not lose any writing or photography (notice how calm I am). Even better, I married an engineer who knows how to repair such messes. We must reinstall the operating system, a process requiring days. I write from John’s computer, graciously lent for the occasion. Only I am without my photos, which are trapped in operating system limbo. Meanwhile, an external hard drive makes its express way from Cupertino to the IK.

While every attempt will be made to bring you the usual level of elegance we here at the IK strive for, your patience is appreciated.

So, spicy lamb burgers.

I think I’ve mentioned our brief membership in a meat CSA–Community Supported Agriculture Program–wherein we received monthly delivery of organic meat from a local farm. Box contents, chosen by the farmer, invariably contained one large roast and numerous one-pound bags of ground beef, pork, lamb, and/or goat.

It wasn’t long before I found myself desperately searching out recipes creatively utilizing ground meat. I made Kheemas both Indian and Korean, Simon Hopkinson’s mince (which I loved but John did not), meatballs of every persuasion, Claudia Roden’s brochettes, keftas, and kebabs, Tamasin Day-Lewis’s Italian meat loaf.

What we liked best, though, wasn’t a formal recipe. More of a bits-and-pieces assemblage, these meals are free associations involving various cuisines: Asia, Mexico, Italy, the Middle East.

The meat–here, ground lamb, but just as easily ground chicken or pork–is formed into smallish patties, seasoned with herbs and spices, sautéed, then served with an appropriate flatbread. That might be an authentic flatbread we’ve taken time to bake. Often it’s tortillas. Here, it’s pita bread.

Alongside, appropriate vegetables are heaped on a plate–crisp lettuce, a few shreds of onion or scallion, finely sliced radish. For me, some sour cream, yogurt, or salsa: whatever is appropriate. Maybe black beans or Israeli couscous. We wrap the patties in bread, add veggies of our choice, dip in the sauce: easy, messy, good.

When I began making these spicy lamb burgers, I had no idea how closely they aligned with Middle Eastern Schwarma recipes. This was less a case of reinventing the wheel than my internalizing a great deal of cookbook reading and applying what I’d learned. So know this isn’t a case of recipe plagiarizing, but a deep bow to Middle Eastern cuisine in all its gorgeous complexity.

“Spicy” may something of a misnomer. While I like a bright, assertively flavored burger–really, burgerlet–that doesn’t mean the spices should blow your head off. That said, if you prefer a milder approach, use quarter teaspoons of seasoning where the recipe calls for teaspoons. Or do a taste test by frying a small patty. You can always add more seasoning.

Don’t freak out over the preserved lemons. Here’s a recipe. Don’t want to use preserved lemons?Fresh lemon juice is fine. So is bottled lemon juice. Who’s looking?

Who’s looking also goes for how far you want to take your mortar and pestling/chopping/mincing of the spices/parsley/garlic/lemon/scallion mixture. As you see from the pictures, I don’t mind a chunkier texture. If you do, by all means haul out your processor or spice grinder and have at it.