I am finding uses for the Korean Aged Black Garlic I recently bought. It has a very unique flavor that pairs well with mushrooms and soy sauce for a complete umami experience. Have you tried cooking with black garlic yet? I don’t know a lot about it, but I’m interested in finding some new flavor combinations to play around with.

For this dish, I coarsely chopped some black garlic. You’ll see for yourself upon handling black garlic that it is easier to give it a coarse chop than a fine mince. It is very soft, yet not as soft as roasted garlic. It’s interesting. I like it. It is also black… very black.

I had some of my favorite mushrooms on hand- Hazel Dell, of course. I sliced up some cinnamon cap, cremini, oyster, and shiitake mushrooms, as well as some bok choy I received from my CSA with Ollin Farms.

This side dish is very simple to make.

Heat up a pan with 1/2 TB peanut oil and 1/2 TB butter. When this is hot, add your mushrooms and get them going. After a few minutes when they start to almost stick to the pan, add a TB of soy sauce, some chopped black garlic, and give it a stir.

After a few more minutes, add the chopped bok choy and 1/3 cup or so of white wine to get a little sauce going.

When the bok choy is bright green, it’s done. I sprinkled some toasted sesame seeds on top.

I kept this really simple for three reasons. 1) I wanted to taste the black garlic. 2) the mushrooms and bok choy were super fresh, so I wanted to allow their flavors to show through without added spice. I just might change that if I make this again without farm-fresh foods. 3) I served it with my super flavorful Best Grilled Shrimp.

Well, Ollin Farms never disappoints! They have crabapples, which I find pretty cool. I picked some up at the market and headed over to my friend Chad at Hazel Dell and asked for mushrooms for a crabapple sauté.

Chad recommended a 1/2 pound mixed bag of small cremini and shiitake mushrooms. Chad knows best…

I got them home and had a plan: Tempeh burgers topped with a crabapple mushroom sauce. Perfect.

I got started on my tempeh burgers and made them according to my recipe. Then, I assembled the crabapple mushroom sauce.

First I sauteed 1/2 of a local sweet yellow onion in 1 TB olive oil and 1 TB butter until they started to turn golden brown.

Next, I added the mushrooms, which I had sliced, and let them start to cook on medium-high for 10 minutes or so in the butter-olive oil mixture until they were nice and soft. I added a little sea salt, tossed them a bit, and added 3 crabapples, chopped into small chunks.

After adding the crabapples, lower the heat to medium. The apples will start to release juice and make a crabapple-mushroom gravy-sauce.

I made some quick vegetarian maple beer baked beans, grilled a zucchini and yellow squash, grilled some tempeh burgers, and topped them with shaved parmesan and my crabapple-mushroom sauce.

Delicious.

Turkey burgers are a great way for the carnivore in this house and the mostly vegetarian (me) to compromise. I do enjoy turkey, especially over the last year or so. It has good flavor, and something about it does not trigger the gag reflex so many vegetarians talk about when they smell raw meats. So, I’ve come to like turkey and I’m trying to find good ways to prepare it.

This was my first try at a turkey burger and it turned out great.

I bought one pound of ground turkey thigh at Whole Foods. I put it in a big bowl and added:

• 2 cloves chopped garlic
• 1 small chopped onion
• some scallions, sliced
• 1 TB Worcestershire
• 1 TB olive oil
• some Urfa pepper flakes from Savory Spice Shop (use red pepper flakes if you don’t have the kind I used)
• a splash of Harry’s Habanero, from the Boulder Hot Sauce Company
• 3 TB of crumbled feta

I put mine on a small ciabatta bun I picked up at Whole Foods, and topped it with some local lettuce from Munson Farms, and a simple mushroom sauté of a medley of little mushrooms I picked up from Hazel Dell that I sauteed in butter, garlic, and sea salt. Those little mushrooms really didn’t need any special treatment since they were so flavorful on their own… but I do apologize for not recalling which shrooms made it into the mix.

In the end, it turned out to be a tasty burger.