I was totally not thinking about putting this on my blog. But when my husband said it was so good that in a restaurant he would pay 30 bucks for it…… I thought oh well, others might like it too.

Since I was not thinking about sharing this, I will  have measurements only for the patties and  instructions on how to do the rest. This is a lamb burger and the components bring you the taste of summer and the Mediterranean.

For the patties I used minced lamb. I bought it from a farmer and I am pretty sure the meat actually made a tremendous amount of difference to this burger. Managed to keep the patty juicy, full of flavor and at the same time the lamb taste was not overpowering.

For 6 small or 4 big patties I used

• 1 medium size red onion sauteed in 2 T olive oil (add the olive oil to the mix too)
• 2 minced garlic cloves
• 1 lb of minced lamb,
• 1 egg
• 2T crumbled feta cheese
• 1T breadcrumb
• 1/2t dried oregano
• 1t mix of sweet paprika, ground cumin and ground coriander
• salt, black pepper, and a pinch of cayenne pepper

……..you can play with the spices, if you like hot and spicy you can add more cayenne and if you like the cumin-coriander taste you can increase that too……

The other components in the burger:

• Roasted red and orange sweet pepper. Cut the peppers in half, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Place them in a roasting pan or dish cut side up. Roast in the oven at 440F until skin is charred. Alternatively you can also grill them in whole, turning to grill on each side. Once they are done wrap them in cling film, it will make peeling easy. Once it is cooled, peel the skin off and slice them, drizzle with olive oil and some fresh oregano. You can roast as much as you want, because the leftover can be kept in a jar with oil for later use for a week. You can use it on salads, sandwiches.

• Tomato ceviche. This has to be acidic to compensate for the sweetness of the roasted veggies in the burger!  Slice heirloom or other big, juicy, meaty, tasty, yummy tomatoes into medium slices with same size slices of red onion. Mix some water, lemon juice, little bit of vinegar (any type), sugar, chopped fresh cilantro, salt and pepper. You need just as much liquid to just cover the tomatoes.    (taste the liquid and adjust to your liking)     Marinate the tomatoes and onion in the liquid. They are ready in 30 minutes. If you leave them too long, for hours, they will be falling into parts. It is not a problem, but a bit difficult to handle.

• I also made a roasted tomato-preserved lemon ketchup. If this is too much work for you replace it with some store bought, special, tasty ketchup. Do not ruin your burger with some generic, artificial one! I roasted the halved tomatoes with olive oil, salt, pepper and onions cut in quarters at 440F for only 30 minutes. Once done, blended them and cooked the puree with 1 chopped preserved lemon, cayenne pepper, lots of salt, a little bit of dark brown sugar.

To assemble the burger I used more fresh red onion slices, more crumbled feta, micro greens and olives.

ENJOY!