All great chefs reinterpret classic dishes from their childhood. And while I am no great chef, I did have a certain fondness, growing up, for what we knew as "ground sirloin".

It was a seasoned oval patty of ground sirloin, browned, and served with mashed potatoes and gravy. Mushroom gravy for me and my dad, who were the only ones who liked mushrooms.

Since I've been cooking, I've occasionally reinterpreted this meat-and-potatoes staple, by essentially putting the mushroom gravy in the patty. The reason this is On The Plate, and not even Precipes, is that I'm still working out a lot of the details.

The general method involves precooking some onion, garlic, herbs de provence, and chopped mushrooms in a saute pan until they've browned and lost most of their moisture. This pseudo-duxelle is then cooled before being mixed in with ground beef and some minced, cooked bacon. The beef is formed into the traditional oval patties, the patties are browned and cooked through (about five minutes per side) and served with, in this case, a mix of roasted Yukon Gold and sweet potato.

The flavors are mostly there, but since the mushroom mixture is already well cooked, any mushroomy bits on the outside edges of the patties tend toward burnt. The texture is also looser than I'd like - I think six ounces of shrooms and a cup of onion is way too much for a pound of beef, even after most of the water's been driven from the vegetables. The patty broke apart and crumbled way more easily that I'd want. I suppose the traditional solution is an egg binder, or an egg and bread crumb binder, but we might be crossing the border into Too Much Fucking Hassle Land at that point.

Still, it was pretty good. And as a middle-class, upstate New York white nerd-boy, it's not like I have a rich culinary heritage to draw on. So there will be further experiments, possibly even involving red wine when I get some more from Trader Joe's, in the quest to French up a childhood meal.