'You Feta Be Kidding Me' Burger #GirlCarnivore #BurgeroftheMonth

Welcome to the inaugural Burger of the Month event hosted by Kita of Girl Carnivore. Each month, she will be sending out a list of secret ingredients to inspire a new burger recipe. What delicious, carnivorous fun! You know I was in immediately.

This month's line-up needed to include: radishes, spinach, lemon, and cream. Someone asked, "Do we need to incorporate all the ingredients? Or do you need to include just one of the ingredients?" The answer - yes, the challenge is to use all of them in your recipe, but they can be toppings, or accoutrements to the burger, so you can get all the components in a single bite.

So, I decided to make lamb patties flecked with preserved lemon and stuffed with feta cheese on a bed of butter-braised spinach topped with pickled radishes. Needless to say, I did not have a good name for this crazy creation. So, I posted a photo to social media and asked the hive mind for their opinions. Lots of 'likes' and 'yums', but no one had a good suggestion for me until Christina, who follows my blog page on Facebook, chimed in with "Or You Feta Be Kidding Me burger!" I loved it immediately. So, Christina, thanks for naming this month's Burger of the Month creation. I was completely stumped.

Ingredients makes 4 burgers

Patties

• 1 pound ground lamb
• 2 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
• 1 T diced caperberries (or regular capers, whole)
• 2 T diced preserved lemon (my one of my preserved lemon recipes here)
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and pressed
• 5 grinds black pepper

Butter-Braised Spinach

• 5 ounces organic baby spinach
• 2 T + 1 T butter (my hand-pressed butter recipe)
• freshly grated nutmeg

Accoutrements

• pickled radishes and red onions (my quick pickled red onions and radishes here)
• buns - or - butter lettuce leaves for serving

Procedure

Patties
Place all of the ingredients together in a mixing bowl and blend it together until well-combined. Let the mixture rest for, at least 10 to 15 minutes so the flavors can meld together. Divide the meat into quarters and form into patties.

Place 2 ounces (it was a generous tablespoon) in the center of the patty, fold up the meat so that it completely encases the cheese. Flatten again into a patty. Set aside until ready to cook or grill.

Butter-Braised Spinach

Melt 2 T butter in a large skillet. Add in the spinach and stir. As moisture releases from the spinach stir again so that it doesn't stick to the pan. Once the spinach is completely softened, Stir in the remaining 1 T butter.

Grate nutmeg into the spinach and stir to combine.

To Serve
Cook patties to desired doneness. Assemble the burgers. Since two of us are eliminating gluten and carbs, burgers were lettuce-wrapped with braised spinach on the bottom and pickled red onions and radishes on the top. The other two had traditional buns with the same accoutrements.

And that's a wrap for my June Burger of the month. Enjoy! And I can't wait to see what July has in store for our secret ingredients.