Maggie from Say Yes To Salad chose kabocha as this week’s BSI (Blogger Secret Ingredient)! As soon as I found out about this, I just knew I had to enter. Why? Do you even have to ask?

Kabocha is just about my favorite food in the whole wide world. I can eat pounds and pounds of it without ever getting sick of them. I love them baked, roasted, mashed, stewed, pan-fried, stuffed…just about however way I can incorporate into whatever dish! In fact, if you’ve followed my blog for a long time, you’ll see a trend in most of my recipes…they’ve all got kabocha (sometimes just referred to as pumpkin or winter squash) in them in some way or the other! It’s my “secret ingredient” in most of my dishes, and I’m famous for squeezing them into almost every dish I make.

I always just roast a whole big kabocha at one time and store the flesh in a container like this:

Anyway, I’ve been brainstorming since yesterday night when I found out about the BSI. I had so many ideas running through my head, my head was spinning. The first thought was to make some kind of pasta, but I did my homework and found out Maggie doesn’t like pasta. Well, I wanted to make something the BSI host who enjoy too, so after many rough “drafts” I finally settled on…

Kabocha-Lentil Burgers!!

Excuse me for being so enthusiastic. But kabocha does that to me. It’s that freaking good. Let’s do a booty-shake-shake for kabocha!

Okay, I’m back. I’m ready to share these fabulous burgers with you. Here is the list of ingredients:

Kabocha-Lentil Burgers

• 1 cup dried lentils (I chose black lentils because that was what I had on hand)
• 1 cup cooked and mashed kabocha flesh
• 3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
• 1/3 cup walnuts
• 1/2 cup minced onion
• 2 large cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 egg
• curry powder
• cumin powder
• garam marsala
• salt and pepper

First, cook up the lentils…it should yield about 2 1/2 cups cooked.

Next, put the walnuts into a food processor…

And grind them up with the oats…

Mince up the onions and garlic…

Once the lentils are cooked, combine them with the kabocha in a food processor…(It’s ok if some of the lentils remain whole)

Dump them out into a big bowl and crack in the egg, onion, garlic, spices and seasonings…(I didn’t measure out the spices but just shook them out into the bowl by taste and test)

Don’t forget the oat-walnut flour…

Mix them up real good…

Form them into patties and line them up on a greased baking sheet…

Don’t they look like chocolate-chip cookie dough?

Bake them in a 375 degree oven for about 20 minutes until the exterior is nice and crunchy…

Look at that…precious little gems, they are! And sorry to be repetitious, but gosh do they really look like chocolate-chip cookies!

I ate two of these by themselves…

And the other two I stuffed into a rosemary wrap like this:

Two kabocha-lentil burgers, dill cottage cheese, lettuce, and grape tomatoes, stuffed in a rosemary wrap.

FYI, I made my own dill cottage cheese by mixing whipped cottage cheese, freshly chopped dill, and a splash of lemon juice and pepper.

All rolled up and toasted to perfection:

How can you say no to this baby?

The kabocha-lentil burgers were damn delicious either by themselves or stuffed into a wrap. They were nice and crispy outside, yet creamy and crumbly inside, with an incredibly nutty taste and a slightly spiced, slight sweet roasted flavor.

Thanks for choosing kabocha for this week’s BSI, Maggie!

And now…time to dance again! I’ve been shaking and grooving and rocking my butt a lot these days. Because it’s so damn wonderful to get back my energy and actually have enough muscles to jump and skip about!

Just a few months back, I was like a freaking old lady. Nothing wrong with being elderly…except that I was only 21 years old and I could barely walk uphill. I had to climb the stairs one step at a time, holding on to the rails with shaky knees. I didn’t have any muscles on my legs to be able to run, or hop, or even walk faster than snail’s pace. I couldn’t stay up late at night because my body just shut down from lack of energy.

You might not understand this overwhelming sense of euphoria that washes over me each time I regain my old ability to move freely. Ah, movement. Such a simple freedom of the body that is so taken for granted. I don’t ever want to lose it again. Hell, even if I live to be a 90-year-old granny, I’m gonna be an ass-kicking granny like that karate-chopping old lady from Madagascar! Yee-hah!

Now, will you join me in a shimmy-shake-shake? (Actually, I was shaking and dancing in the middle of the streets while walking back home from Whole Foods and some car honked at me. Guess they thought I was crazy!)

Question of the day: What physical activity do you do? Which do you enjoy the most?

When I was in first to second grade, I did Chinese traditional dance. In seventh to eighth grade, I did trampoline gymnastics. In high school, I did track, cross-country, gymnastics, and Tae Kwon Do. I have a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and I’d like to relive those days of kicking and flying, pretending to be as cool as Jackie Chan!

P.S. Megan from Sunshine ‘n Spice is having a holey donuts giveaway!

Related posts:

1. Life University
2. Open for Discussion: Is Total Recovery Possible?
3. One in a 150,000
4. Oiling up my rusty culinary skills
5. The Difference Between Obsession and Passion

Tagged as: burger, cheese, kabocha, lentils, nuts, tomato, wrap