worth the wait, i hope?

whoops, it's been more than a month since I've posted a meal. I've been cooking, and I've got more than a few meals I want to tell you about. I just been crazy with some other projects and haven't gotten a chance to come back here.

But tonight I made some amazing grilled sandwiches, you'll be interested to hear.

The other day Wife and I picked up some frozen tuna steaks. Not sushi grade or anything, just some fairly inexpensive vacuum sealed ones. They needed to be cooked through, but that is okay, I like cooked tuna too. I really did very little to them, about an hour before they hit the grill I set them in some soy sauce flavored with ginger. Just on the one side, the other only got a light dusting of kosher salt.

But on top of the tuna I made some bean patties that turned out quite well. For those I opened two cans of black beans and one of chickpeas. Leaving one can of black beans alone I dumped the other two in the food processor with a single glug of olive oil and the juice of a lime and gave it about five good pulses. Well shy of slurry state, but quite broken up were the beans. Transferring to a bowl and adding, lessee...an egg, some breadcrumbs, some corn meal as binders. Also some cumin an some chopped peanuts I toasted in a pan, some chili powder, a couple cloves of garlic and salt and plenty of pepper. Oh, I also found some grilled onions and green chili left in the fridge from the meal the night before. I ran my knife through those to a fine dice and into the mix they went. I was basically on a pantry raid, but trying to keep in a southwesterly direction.

That mixture chilled in the fridge for awhile, then I pulled it back out and formed patties. I got eight of them out of this, plenty for tonight then I can freeze the rest after they come off the grill. They'll be brilliant for a workday lunch.

All the patties, bean and tuna alike went onto the hot coals with a little oak smoke from some kiln fired lumber scraps my neighbor gave me. Tasty.

While they were all outside obtaining perfect grill lines I found a carrot and a poblano chili in the crisper. Not owning a mandoline yet, I just ran my peeler first around the carrot, then just on the same side all the way through which yields wide very flat strips. To each of those I ran the tip of my knife down effectively julienning the bunch into about 1.5mm threads. After a quick decapitation and membrane strip the poblano recieved a similar treatment.

All that was left was assembly. Taking a toasted hamburger patty (admittedly, a nice roll or ciabata would be nice, but you takes what you have on hand sometimes, yaknow?) I slathered some mayo, plopped down my tuna, plopped down a bean patty, scattered some of that vegetation, some salsa fresca, and the crown.

Plunked down next to it were some basic onigiri (unfilled, but rolled in sesame) and a tall IPA.

My kingdom for a sandwich.