Moroccan Beef (or Turkey) Patties

I am seriously excited by the yumminess of these. I've had this recipe, from Rachael Ray, bookmarked for awhile and just decided to make them tonight to go with some leftover pasta, spaghetti sauce, and this spinach/breadcrumb/parmesan/mushroom casserole that Kea invented. We'd had some chicken baked with spinach and parmesan earlier in the week but ran out so I just wanted to make some kind of meat thing that would "go."

Okay, they don't really go. They are okay if you don't eat them in the same bite, but just one after the other. My logic was that Morocco is by Italy. lol.

But anyway, the mini Moroccan-spiced burgers are awesome. Hmm... I like my name for them better... They sort of remind me of the baked kibbee served at the middle eastern restaurant at my school. Aha, similar spices: cinnamon, allspice, parsley. They just had an awesome unique flavor.

I think I am going to recommend them especially to my friend Katie K, who we had over for burgers the other night. She was saying that she hardly eats burgers but she liked ours stuffed with giardiniera. Later she said she doesn't like American food much (even though she's American) because it's so bland and prefers Indian and Mexican food. I think she would love these. Not that we need folks eating more beef. I recently have been thinking about the whole thing about cows being a larger cause of global warming than cars and thinking I should maybe eat less beef. So yeah we made these with turkey. Tastes the same in most cases.

Oh, a note on making burgers: Did you know you are not supposed to smash it when you mix and form the raw meat? I always did that until I saw Alton Brown talking about it on Good Eats. I try to be gentler now and my burgers have much better texture. They're more tender.