How to Cook Lamb: Lamb Burger Recipe with Garlic, Shallots, & Feta on Homemade Rosemary Focaccia

Lamb Burgers on Homemade Rosemary Focaccia

Note: I'll be posting my easy focaccia recipe soon on A Year in Bread and will let you know when it's up. Update: the rosemary focaccia recipe is up! Thanks for your patience. I'm sure I would have had it up by now if I hadn't been spending so much time scratching and snuggling Esmeralda, but unless that little attention hound girl is napping, she just will not leave me alone. And you probably thought farm life was easy.

You might think that it would be neat to have a best friend who's writing a cookbook, and I suppose that it would be if you happened to live in the same town—or even in the same state—as she does. But I can tell you from my own misfortune personal experience that having a best friend who is writing a cookbook and lives on the other side of the country is absolutely no fun at all.

Not only does she no longer have time to goof off on the phone have serious discussions about life, the universe, and everything with you because she's perpetually frazzled and frantically scrambling to make yet another deadline, but you can't even go over to her house and help devour the plates and platters of scrumptious food she cooks up every day in the name of work. Nope, you can only drool along with everyone else in cyberspace as she taunts you with the offer of a free-for-the-asking gorgeous chocolate cake—that's 'pick-up at my house only' of course. And then there was the message she left on my answering machine one day saying, "I have buttercream frosting all over my hands and you don't!"

If your evil pal best friend also happens to be a computer genius and is therefore your own personal tech support, things are even worse. Even I, computer challenged as I am, know that the new RAM she advised me to buy several months ago (which is now so old it's probably obsolete—or at least available at one-tenth of the price) would probably do a lot more good if it were actually in my computer rather than sitting on top of it, still nestled in the cozy little protective layer of bubble wrap it arrived in.

Besides having to starve not being able to indulge in all of her homemade gourmet goodness, I must also face the sad and frustrating truth that there isn't really any way to pitch in and get this annoying project finished already help her out because I'm a couple of thousand miles away. Even when she has a frightening run-in with a wasp, to which she is deathly allergic, and ends up spraying a counter full of food (and several hours worth of work) with toxic bug spray, all I can do is feebly try to console her over the phone.

Once in a while, though, there does come an opportunity to save the day lend a long-distance helping hand, like when she calls and says she needs a few step-by-step photos of mixing up some ground lamb for her lamb burger recipe, and her market is totally lambless. No problem! you assure her as you head out to the covered porch off the kitchen, lift up the lid of one of your giant, ancient, jam packed chest freezers and pluck out a package of grass-fed ground lamb that you just happened to have raised yourself.

And because helping your best friend out of a bind is of course its own reward, having to cook up and consume some lamb burgers that evening for dinner (since you've already gone to the trouble of mixing up the meat—and thankfully haven't had to douse it with bug spray) is just icing on the proverbial cake, especially if she happened to have told you once that lamb burgers on homemade rosemary focaccia 'buns' are very, very tasty.

So I guess having a best friend who's writing a cookbook isn't all bad. Now if only she would call and say she desperately needs a picture of some deep, dark chocolate cake batter—and buttercream frosting of course.



Beth & Susan's Feta Lamb Burgers
After taking the required photos for Beth, I decided to apply my More, More, More philosophy to her original recipe and mixed some chopped fresh parsley and rosemary from the greenhouse into the meat. Oh, and I also added more shallots and garlic than she told me to, but hopefully she won't be able to tell in the photos. If I'd had any ripe heirloom tomatoes in the kitchen garden on the day I made these burgers, you can bet they would have been piled high with thick and juicy slices. But since it was still spring, I made due with some freshly picked arugula instead.

As always, I urge you to seek out local and organic ingredients whenever possible—they really do make a difference in so many ways. All natural, grass-fed lamb raised by small producers (like us) is becoming more and more readily available around the U.S., so there's no need to buy frozen lamb that has traveled halfway across the world.

1 pound ground lamb, preferably all natural and grass-fed
3 ounces feta cheese, crumbled (blue cheese is nice, too)
3 heaping Tablespoons chopped shallots
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped (about 1 heaping Tablespoon)
1 to 2 Tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary leaves
3 heaping Tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
Freshly ground pepper
A sprinkle of salt (the feta is salty so don't overdo it)

Place the ground lamb, feta cheese, shallots, garlic, rosemary, and parsley in a bowl. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then gently mix until combined—the best way to do this is with your clean hands. Form into 3 or 4 patties.

Place patties on a grill or in a hot frying pan (I recommend cast iron) and cook until brown, about 5 minutes. Flip burgers and cook until desired doneness. Serve between slices of focaccia or your favorite bread or buns.

Still hungry? Here are more of my easy lamb recipes:
Grilled Lamb Burgers with Roasted Red Pepper, Parsley, & Kalamata Olive Relish from Cooking with Shelburne Farms
Easy Ground Lamb & Feta Stuffed Mushrooms
Onion & Herb Crusted Lamb Spareribs and Grilled Lamb Leg Steaks

And you'll find links to all of my Less Fuss, More Flavor recipes in the sidebar of the Farmgirl Fare homepage.

This is my contribution to the one year anniversary edition of Grow Your Own, a wonderful twice monthly food blogging event hosted at Andrea's Recipes that celebrates the foods we grow or raise ourselves and the dishes we make using our homegrown products. This special edition of the roundup will be posted at Andrea's Recipes the first week of September. Do you Grow Your Own? Find out how to join in the fun here.

© Copyright 2008 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares recipes, stories, & photos from her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.