Pesto Chicken Burger Sliders with Roasted Red Pepper and Pesto-Hummus

Alright, I'm going be blunt. I'm pretty proud of this one. This was another instance of some weird culinary vision that I created in my head and couldn't seem to shake until I saw it executed. My first thought was to make chicken burgers, since I'm steering clear from red meat for a while but really love burgers. (This? And this?! I've made my case.) Then immediately I thought, "You know what I love more than burgers? Burger sliders!" I don't know what it is, but they're just so damn cute! And juicy. And you're eating less, even if you have four of them, right?

Anyway, Dylan and I made these last Friday before going out, and when I say they were amazing, that's an understatement. The pesto and lemon hummus spread is the perfect melt-in-your-mouth topping for these succulent chicken burgers, and the slightly warmed, soft ciabatta rolls made the whole burger literally melt with each bite. The best way to sum up these burgers is to quote Dylan's reaction. He's fairly honest with my cooking, and he never gushes unless I really hit the jackpot. So when he said, "I don't even want to go out anymore because this is already the best part of my night," I knew I found a recipe (and a boy) worth keeping.

Pesto Chicken Burger Sliders with Roasted Red Pepper and Pesto-Hummus
Makes: 5 sliders  Prep: 15 minutes  Total: 30 minutes

Ingredients
1 lb ground chicken
1/2 cup pesto
3 tbs egg whites
Salt and pepper
6 tbs lemon hummus
5 large roasted red peppers
5 mini ciabatta rolls

Directions
Combine ground chicken, egg whites, and 2 tablespoons of pesto into a medium bowl and mix with hands. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Once incorporated, form the meat into 5 mini burger patties. In a large skillet, fry the burgers for about 10 to 15 minutes, or until the meat is fully cooked and the juices run clear.
For the pesto and lemon hummus spread, combine the remaining pesto (6 tsp) with the lemon hummus. Before serving, briefly warm the ciabatta rolls in the oven and layer a generous amount of the hummus spread on the top bun. Assemble the burgers and serve with sweet potato fries.

Citrus Veggie Quinoa Salad

I suppose you can't really have a food blog these days and not have at least one post about quinoa, right? If you've never had quinoa, there are a few things you need to know:

1) It's pronounced "KEEN-wah", not "ki-NO-wah" or "qui-NO-wah" or any other easily mistakable pronunciation.
2) Quinoa became very popular because of influential food bloggers like Heidi Swanson, who turned an unusual grain into a multi-functional health food staple.
3) Quinoa is kind of a grain, but kind of not. It's like a seed, but more like a grain? Whatever it is, it's surprisingly really good.

So, I made a huge batch of quinoa salad to use as a grab-and-go snack, lunch and dinner this past week. Somehow I've managed to eat the same thing all week and not get sick of it, meaning I'll definitely be experimenting with more quinoa recipes in the near future.

Citrus Veggie Quinoa Salad
Serves: 10-12  Prep: 25  Total: 40 minutes

Ingredients
1 pound boxed quinoa
1 yellow pepper
1 orange pepper
1 small eggplant
2 Roma tomatoes
1/2 cup green onion, chopped
lemon juice
olive oil
garlic salt
pepper

Directions
Prepare quinoa on the stove as directed.
In the meantime, chop eggplant, pepper, tomato and green onion. Cook eggplant in a medium skillet until slightly softened, or about 5 minutes. Add the pepper into the skillet and cook for another 3-5 minutes. Lastly, add the green onion and tomato and cook for one more minute. Remove from heat.
When the quinoa is full cooked, add in mixed vegetables and toss with citrus dressing (1 part lemon juice, 1 part olive oil, garlic salt and pepper).

Recipes Online

In the age of a generation raised online, information can be accessed instantly by the click of a button. Today hundreds of thousands of recipes are available on the internet, providing never-ending opportunities to expand your food tastes and discover new recipes. Some of these websites and blogs cater to experienced chefs, while others are targeted at people with limited cooking ability. Though I have a plethora of recipes I've inherited from family members, I often find meals on these food sites when I'm looking for a quick fix. Here are a few useful websites I wanted to share as well as recipes I've found on each.

allrecipes.com

This site is great for finding tons of variations on a simple recipe.

These are stuffed peppers I made last week. The baked green peppers are stuffed with ground beef, rice, onion, cheddar cheese and topped with condensed tomato soup before baking for 30 minutes. I was skeptical about the soup at first, but it did a great job of keeping the beef and rice from drying out in the oven. These reheat well too, so don't hesitate to make extra.
Click Here to try it!

supercook.com
By entering ingredients that are in your pantry into the Supercook search engine, this website pulls up hundreds of recipes you can make using the food you already have. (Note: This is a database that will lead you to other food sites to view the actual recipes, so go to the supercook.com for the original website.)

Here's an easy cheeseburger pie I whipped up for dinner last night. I needed a way to get rid of the pound of ground beef in my freezer using what I had. All this recipe requires is ground beef, Bisquick, an onion, 2 eggs, milk, salt and cheddar cheese. Bakes for 25 minutes and leaves plenty of leftovers for lunch on the go.
Click Here to try it!


tastespotting.com
If you're an adventurous eater, then you'll love TasteSpotting. This is a site I discovered today and am really excited to try. Recipes ranging from Korean Pumpkin Porridge to Banana Avocado Pancakes are sprinkled across the site's homepage, with pictures that'll instantly make your mouth water. It premieres a culturally diverse representation of regional cuisines, and you know it's authentic because some of the recipes are still written in their native language! (I found a French onion soup recipe that's written in Polish. Pretty cool, right?)

These pork chop sandwiches are called cemitas, originating from Puebla, Mexico. Cemitas are slider-sized sandwiches, this particular one layered with pork, avocado, sweet cherry peppers and mozzarella all on a homemade roll that takes 8 hours to rise. Whoa. This might be my next culinary feat to tackle.
Click Here to try it!