Confession

So I have a wee confession to make: when cooking, I RARELY follow recipes. When I bake, I measure everything, use the right ingredients, and follow directions. When cooking, however, all bets are off. I use cookbooks, cooking magazines, and other flogs as a huge source of inspiration, but it's seldom that I use the exact ingredients and methods described. I like using what I have around the house or know I can easily buy and adapting recipes to make them quick and easy. Sometimes, this is disastrous (Sorry again about dinner on Monday P!) and other times it's amazing.

Case in point: I found this recipe for black bean burgers with mango salsa at http://testkitchenette.wordpress.com/. The little wheels in my head started to churn as I realized I has almost all the ingredients in my kitchen and mangoes that needed to be used much sooner than later. After previously trying this recipe from 101cookbooks.com with moderate success, I figured I'd blend the two together and see what happened.

The results? Amazing.



Here's a big bowl of the delicious salsa:

• 1 mango
• 1 avocado
• 3 small tomatoes
• 3 chopped green onions
• juice of 1 lime
• salt and pepper

I assembled my burgers much differently and stuck with the more traditional approach suggested in 101 cookbooks and used an egg as the "glue." I also skipped slicing the "burger" in half and just piled all the salsa on top. I was hungry :) The fresh corn and asparagus rounded out a perfect summer meal.

Just because a recipe seems odd or looks intimidating doesn't mean it's not worth a try ;)