Turkey Burgers with Plumb Sauce

The Story:

As promised, here's my first update. I've been buying a lot of fresh plumbs at the grociery store; I always forget just how much I love them until I start eating them fresh.

I've been keeping a "Dietary Diary", in an attempt to shed some of this extra weight (it's working). For weeks we've done a good job of eating at home, and packing lunches, with fresh fruit for breakfast. But we had a mini-vacation last week, and while we were gone the mother in-law house sat. When we came back, they wanted to go out to eat.

I've actually been very good about sticking to good foods, so I wasn't thrilled; but it's more of a social thing than a food thing. We hit the local sports bar, where I spied a turkey burger on their menu. Yeah, still not that healthy, but better than most other options. It was tastey, but I couldn't help but think how it might taste with a sautéd plumb sauce.

The Idea:

After checking out a few different plumb sauces, I decided to go with canned plumbs instead of fresh. Adds the syrup for sweetness, plus it's much cheaper if I screw up. I figured a reduction of plumb puré, muted with something a little savory, would be great with turkey. I always use dijon mustard to mute my fruit glazes, so I decided to try some soy sauce and worsheshire sauce; adding a spoonfull at a time, and then go from there.

Cooking:

I started by peeling and pitting my plumbs, then throwing them and the juice into the food processor. Proccessed until smooth. Sauté pan on medium-high heat, with just a bit of butter (thickens sauce, and makes my stainless-steele pan easier to clean). Toss in the puré-de-plumb (yes, I like to make names up), then as I stirred the sauce, I added a spoon-full of soy sauce and worsheshire sauce. I tasted the mix, and it still seemed too plumby, so I added another spoonfull of each. Now it wasn't sweet enough. That's okay; the key to blind cooking is to be flexible.

Looking up at my cuppord of random cooking things (that's the technical term), I noticed some cayenne pepper and various vinegars. Guess what that makes? That's right, BBQ sauce. I decided on an apple-cidar vinegar, and just eyeballed a BBQ sauce-ammount (if I had to guess, about 2 tbsp), and since I like things spicey, a generous dash or four of the pepper powder.

I continued to let the sauce reduce until it was medium thickness...about the consistancy of BBQ, how about that? Since I'm the worst chef in the world when it comes to timing food, I put the sauce in a container and covered, and let sit in the microwave where it'd retain some heat but continue to thicken.

The burgers themselves could have been cooked by an ape; infact some might argue that they were. Just some lean ground turkey, shaped into elongated patties to fit the buns, and grilled. Part way though grilling I decided a great finisher would be to melt some provolone cheese on top, added near the end so it wouldn't melt too much.

Split the bun, add the burger, top with sauce, vwa-la!

The Results:

Though I didn't end up with my sweet sauce as envisioned, I did end up with a sauce. But was it any good? Well, the cayenne is too spicey for the milder-tastes of Tara. And, when tasting the "naked" sauce, I thought it might have had a little too much of the hot-stuff myself. Not that I can't take heat--I love it. I just thought it might overpower all the other stuff.

So I snapped some pictures, then dug in. The sweeter taste of turkey meat, combined with the cheese, brought the peppery-bite down a level, leaving a very nice, plumby-sweet tasting sauce. Though I had my doubts, it really ended up much better than I had hoped for. Different, but better. Funny how that sometimes works.

I'd refine the sauce a bit more next time; measure the vinegar a little more carefully, and make sure I had some shredded lettuce and some good red onions to add some crunch; turkey burgers are a little softer than beef.

I won't rate my own food; I'm a little too biased for it to mean anything anyway. But would I eat it again? Definately.