Dangerous chicken

I was talking with Jim about how to cook the chicken--a rub, glaze, marinade . . . Jim decided he wanted to marinate them, but he couldn't decide what. He ultimately went for a simple packaged McCormick Mesquite marinade that I'm actually glad got used up. It's one of those things I bought before I realized that I don't really like packaged, instant things. Fresh is always better, but in this case, it worked out well. Jim simply mixed together Canola oil and water and then that was it. I was quite horrified when I got home and realized that he had left the chickens out the entire time he marinated them. I was all ready for him to die from salmonella or something after he ate 'em. I scolded him, but he is quite set in his dangerous ways. It's because I'm a vegetarian, I think. I'm way more paranoid about food poisoning and meat sanitation than he is.

Jim grilled the chickies and the foccacia I picked up from the Farmer's Market the previous week while I started in on my RFD burgers. Real Food Daily in Santa Monica makes the absolute best veggie burger I have ever eaten in my life. It was so amazing, and I was super excited to find the recipe in the RFD cookbook. I've been waiting for an occasion to try to make them, and today was it.

The first thing I did was assemble the food processor and shred a pound of tempeh. I mixed the tempeh with yellow miso, tamari, salt, pepper, water, and Canola oil. Then I mounded it up on a cookie sheet, covered it with aluminum foil, and baked the tempeh for 15 minutes. While it baked, I diced up red bell pepper, green bell pepper, portabello mushroom, garlic, and red onion. Thanks to last week's class, I was able to do a lot better than usual. Even Jim's ridiculously dull knife didn't slow me down as much as it normally does.

I used the food processor to shred some beets, and then I realized that I didn't have any carrots. So what I did was pick through frozen mixed vegetables and get all of the carrots out of them. Plus I also used some frozen corn. Yeah, I know, both were supposed to be fresh, but I had to improvise. Anyway, I sauteed all of the veggies together for about 5 minutes and then mixed in the tempeh.

The mixture went back into the food processor in two batches, and then I got to assemble my veggie burgers. I scored the mixture into fourths and then patted out the patties. I wrapped each one in Saran wrap and into the fridge they went for the flavors to "meld."

Jim's chickens turned out nicely. I could really smell the mesquite flavor, which was pretty cool. But for me, it was all about the foccacia. I absolutely LOVED it. It was slightly sweet, and I could definitely taste its pizza dough roots. Grilling it was perfect, and I couldn't stop picking at the stuff.