What's For Lunch Wednesday - Turkish "Kofte" Burgers

This week I was inspired (more loosely than I planned) by a recipe for Turkish "Kofte" Burgers I found in the book Relish by Daphne Oz.  I used lean ground pork instead of ground beef or lamb because the ground pork was on sale and then I didn't use a pita because I didn't want to waste the calories on bread.  Then I forgot to get feta at the grocery store which meant I wasn't able to make the whipped feta spread.  I ended up using some blue cheese crumbles and some garlic spread instead.

Pretty plate no? The tomato and cucumber salsa was a little onion heavy but otherwise good and very pretty and fresh.  I didn't end up loving the burgers.  I'm not sure if the meat switch was the issue but I don't think it was.  The texture was good but the spice combination just wasn't quite to my taste.  It used a huge variety of different dried spices - mint, coriander, cardamon, cumin, cinnamon and a few others.  I generally like cumin and have loved savory foods with cinnamon but I think the combination of the two with the mint was a little jarring for my fairly conservative taste buds.

The Good: Made plenty and would be easy to reheat through out the week.  Also loved the fresh vegetables in the salsa.

The Bad:  Too much onion in the salsa and found the spice combination in the burger themselves a little unpleasant.

The Verdict: Not for me.  Though I had high hopes for this I think I'll stick with my PB&J.