Eat Your Colors!

I love colorful food. Food, specifically fruits and vegetables, that are rich in color are healthy and delicious. I wanted to make sure that each dish in my meal tonight had a color that popped.

Tonight I made lamb burgers with sweet potato fries and salad. Truth be told, I don't like lamb very much. I will never order it in a restaurant and I have cooked with lamb maybe twice before: once a rack of lamb and once lamb and Guinness stew. Both were at the request of Mr. NC. We bought ground lamb last weekend, so I decided to do something different and make a burger. I do this thing once every few months called "fancy burgers", which involve a lot of fun additions to ground meat. Since I am not as familiar with lamb pairings, I got a recipe out of The Joy of Cooking. I altered it somewhat. With the exception of baking, I don't usually follow recipes exactly. I prefer to adjust to my tastes.

For the burgers, use about a pound of ground lamb (I used about 1.15 lbs and this yielded 5 medium size patties). In a bowl, add the lamb, the zest and juice of one lemon (the color pop for this part of the meal), fresh minced garlic (recipe called for one clove, but I love garlic and used three), two teaspoons each of soy sauce and sherry (I added a little extra of both), and one teaspoon each of salt, pepper and dried thyme. You can also add a couple splashes of hot sauce.

I loved that pop of yellow from the lemon, and this mixture was wonderfully fragrant. Mix everything with your hands and form into patties. Cook the burgers however you like, but if on the stove, definitely use a little olive oil. I cooked mine in a cast iron skillet, about 5 min per side. I love my cast iron skillet for its versatility. It is fun to experiment with.

For the starch, I made sweet potato fries. Super simple to make. Peel and cut sweet potato into fry size. Be prepared to put a little effort into this as sweet potatoes are hard to slice. Foil and spray a baking sheet with cooking spray (I like olive oil spray). Arrange the fries on the sheet, spray again and sprinkle with salt (I use kosher). Bake at 400 until the fries are browned and tender. I love the orange color!!

Finally, I made a salad.While I wish there was some strategy behind this, I was really just using whatever veggies were in the fridge before they went bad. The salad consisted of mixed greens, sugar snap peas, grape tomatoes and cauliflower. Of course the red of the tomatoes pops, but I was also struck by how beautiful the white of the cauliflower was.

The finished products together on one plate (Yes, paper. I am hungover and tired today. Fewer dishes the better.) were wonderfully colorful. I haven't studied nutrition, and I have no proof other than intuition and what I read from time to time, but I think everyone should have REAL color in their diet. Pure and un-processed, colorful food is just so healthy and delicious. My advice is to always make sure that each dish has that one pop of color to ensure you are getting the nutrients you need.