The Pub Burger

I didn't post anything about it yet, but I made burgers two weeks ago. It was my first foray into the burger making world. I didn't want to half ass it, so I didn't start until I had my own meat grinder. I previously made burgers in the style of an In and Out Double Double Animal Style. This time I tried the recent Cook's Illustrated Pub Burger. I documented the process quite well, so pictures before the recipe. 

Chopped Sirloin

Ready to grind

Grinding begins.

Freshly ground beef

Butter the beef

1/2 lb Patties 

Grilling - in a cast iron pan on the grill

2 min per side

5 min in the oven

The treasure

Inside

The Pub Burger

Makes 2 burgers

Ingredients

2 good hamburger buns 

1 lb petit sirloin 

2 tbsp butter

6 strips peppered bacon

2 oz good cheese (I used beechers flagship)

1 tbsp vegetable oil

salt

pepper

Pub Style Burger Sauce

     3/4 cup mayo

     2 tbsp soy sauce

     1 tbsp worcestire sauce

     1 tbsp brown sugar

     1 tbsp chopped chives

     1 tsp ground pepper

     1 clove garlic, minced

Directions

Cut the meat into 1/2 inch cubes trimming away large chunks of fat.

Lay out the chopped meat and place in freezer until slightly hard but not totally frozen.  About 40 minutes.

Also put the kitchen aid attachment in the freezer for at least 15 minutes.

Grind away using the coarse option.  Melt the buter in the mean time.

Spread out the ground beef and drizzle the butter throughout, add some pepper as well. 

Form into 2 meatballs and press out patties from there. Be careful to not overwork the meat.

If you aren't ready to eat, the patties can be stored for no more than a day.

Whip up the sauce (literally, just combine everything), make the bacon, and grate the cheese)

Preheat your over for 300.

Put the oil in the pan and kick the heat up to high. Season both sides of the burger with healthy amounts of salt and pepper while you wait for the oil to be just smoking.

Cook the burgers for 2 minutes without moving it. Flip and then cook on the other side for another 2 minutes.

Now, take the burger and put it on a baking sheet. Add the cheese and stick it in the oven for 5 minutes.

Take it out and let it rest for 5 minutes*. 

Add the sauce and bacon to the bun while you wait. 

Dish it up.

Sadly I trusted my shitty thermometer and not the recipe... I left it in the oven for a little longer and it ended up a bit, but not badly, overcooked. 

I have one more shot at making it medium rare and will post another picture if I do.

Still, so juicy and full of flavor. A true champ of a burger.

* After being very precise with 5 minutes of baking the second time around, the burger come out slightly pink and closer to the upper side of medium than medium rare... those seeking a medium rare burger should put it in for only 3 minutes. 6 will get you medium well. 

Mexican Pizza

The decision for the night was pizza.

The aisles of Trader Joe's were being wondered.

The memory hits me... there's delicious organic chorizo in the freezer that I got from Olympia Local Foods, I believe it was specifically from Flying Dog Farms out in Grapeview, WA. (Note, this is probably the second product I've ever had from Grapeview, the first is obviously this.)

Yes my friends, mexican pizza time. Not mexican pizza that looks like this though.

No quero Taco Bell.

Ingredients:

Trader Joe's wheat pizza dough.
Just Chili California Hot Sauce instead of pizza sauce.
Ranchero Cheese
Chorizo
Jalapenos
Tomatoes
Cilantro

I threw out the crust first.
Broiled for 10 or so minutes.
Added the sauce, cheese, jalapenos, and chorizo.
Broiled for 10 or so minutes.
Added chopped tomatoes and cilantro.

It was ready.  Behold this spicy treat.

RhuBARbs

Before today I couldn't tell you exactly what rhubarb tasted like.

I've had strawberry rhubarb pie many times... but the flavor doesn't stand out enough that you can totally pick apart what rhubarb tastes like. Now, as the first sentence implies, things have changed. I've had raw rhubarb, rhubarb compote, and delicious rhubarb bars.

It all started one day ago at the Nicolai household where fresh rhubarb was cut. More detail on that adventure can be found on the Nicolai blog.

The many stalks waited in the fridge overnight and then I swooped in with a delicious sounding recipe to make their unique taste mine. Rhubarb bars. RhuBARbs.

RhuBARbs
Makes a 9x13 inch pan full

Crust:

12 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cubed
2 cups flour
2/3 cup granulated sugar
Zest of 1 lemon

Filling:

1 3/4 cup rhubarb compote
1/4 cup lemon juice (just happened to be all the juice from the zested lemon)
1/2 cup sugar
5 eggs
2 tbsp cornstarch

Compote:

4 cups rhubarb, sliced in 1/4 to 1/2 inch slices
3/4 cup sugar

Directions:

Make the compote! (Mix sugar and chopped rhubarb in a pan over medium heat. Simmer for about 10 minutes or until you can smoosh out all the rhubarb chunks. Blend it into a puree.)

Make the crust! (Toss all the ingredients into a blender and pulse until the mixture is down to large crumbs. Press it into a greased 9x13 pan and stick it in the fridge/freezer for 15 minutes. Also, kick the oven onto 350.)

Bake the crust! (20-25 minutes @ 350 and in the meantime...)

Make the filling! (Mix everything up. Whisk it hard. I still had some disconcerting chunks of cornstarch so I ran it through a pasta strainer)

Add the filling to the now slightly browned crust! (Turn the oven down to 325 (I forgot to do this and it still turned out awesome) and bake for about 25 minutes so the filling is set.

Remove it from the oven, let it cool, chop into pieces and hit it with some powdered sugar.

Truth.

Portoborzo Stuffed Bell Peppers

Question: When did bell peppers become the most expensive groceries... well, pine nuts excluded?

I still don't have the answer, but I realized this was a problem about 40 minutes after I decided I wanted to make stuffed peppers and went to the grocery store. $3 each. Craziness. Those things are worth approximately 99 cents to me.

Seeing the outrageous price I decided I would stuff portobello mushrooms instead. Turns out there really isn't enough of a cavity to stuff things into a portobello mushroom. So, I chopped up the mushrooms and now had a bunch of undercooked orzo and uncooked mushrooms in a red sauce. My hand had been forced. I had no choice... back to the store for some overpriced peppers.

All said and done with bitterness about having to buy pricey peppers aside, these suckers are tasty. And quite healthy too. Bonus.

Recipe modified from here.

Portoborzo (Portobello + Orzo) Stuffed Bell Peppers
Serves 6

1 28-oz can whole Italian Tomatoes
3 portobello mushrooms, chopped
2 tbsp dried oregano
1/2 cup fresh grated parmesan plus extra for topping
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
4 cups low sodium vegetable broth
1 cup orzo
6 bell peppers of your desired color
chopped basil and parsley

Kick that oven on to 400 and start to heat the vegetable broth up to a boil.

Take the tomatoes out of the can (use the sauce as well) and break them up with your hands. You can squish them through your fingers to break them... it's fun. Now add the oregano, cheese, olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper.

Now the vegetable broth should be boiling. Add the orzo and cook for 3 minutes (this won't cook it all the way). Drain the orzo so that the broth is poured into the baking pan and not wasted. Add the orzo to the tomato-mushroom mix.

Cut the tops off the peppers and remove all the ribs and seeds. Take a small little slice off the bottom so that they can stand up. Load the peppers up, put them in the broth filled dish, cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes. Remove the foil, sprinkle cheese over the top, and cook for another 15 minutes or so.

Touch it up with a little parsley and basil to make it pretty.

Panko Parm Halibut Cheeks

As if I needed another reason to adore Olympia Seafood Company, they provided me with a huge one last week. I stopped in to grab something to cook up for dinner and something stood out in a big way. Halibut Cheeks, fresh that day. After making that selection I got 8 of them (3/4 lb) and the man helping me (I believe he owns the place) got really excited as they were going to be his dinner as well. Having never cooked Halibut Cheeks before I asked what his plan was. Excitedly, he told about how the guy at the restaurant next door (I have to imagine he was talking about Dockside Bistro). Breaded with a mixture of panko and parmesan, egg white wash, a bit of salt and pepper, pan fried, dip it in a red sauce. I was sold. Literally on the cheeks, figuratively on the recipe. To make things easy for me, he even offered a handful of panko so I wouldn't have to put any unnecessary time between me and dinner. I had some though and happily declined. I drove home and whipped up this choice meal.

Panko Parm Halibut Cheeks

8 med size halibut cheeks
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan
1/2 cup panko
3 egg whites
salt
pepper
ghee or vegetable oil
your favorite red pasta sauce... or make your own

The Cheeks:

Super Easy!

Mix the parm and panko in a blender. Blend. Put on plate thats larger than the biggest cheek.

Hit both sides of the raw cheeks with salt and pepper (I rolled them in it, which was a little excessive)

Dip a cheek in the egg whites.

Bread it in the panko and parm mixture. Don't be afraid to press a little bit on to make sure it sticks.

Repeat with each cheek.

The sauce:

I mixed a can of organic tomato sauce with all the available herbs from the garden. Those were...

Greek oregano
Chives
Silver thyme
Parsley
Rosemary

I didn't feel like chopping, so I blended them and added it to the sauce with about 3 tbsp of balsamic vinegar.

Cooking:

I used about a tbsp of ghee for each batch of 4 cheeks. Burner on medium-high in a nonstick pan. Approximately 3 minutes on each side.

Bring the sauce to a boil.

Serve.

Love.

Mango Habanero Chicken Burgers

Computers were dying and memory cards were disappearing, but delicious things were certainly being cooked. Specifically, fiery and fruity yet healthy chicken burgers.

The recipe was pulled from here, but changed in one notable way... adding habaneros to really add the kick it needs.

1 lb (99% lean) ground chicken
1/4 cup greek yogurt
1 freshly chopped mango, chopped
1/3 cup cilantro, chopped
1/3 cup red onion, chopped
1 jalapeno, chopped
2 tsp jerk seasoning
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 habaneros, chopped
Zest of 1 lime

It's all quite simple. Mix everything except the chicken together.

Now fold the chicken in with the mixture being careful to not over mix it (thus making the chicken tough). Form into 4 normal sized burgers or 3 gigantic burgers (not the best idea).

Additionally, cooking them is quite easy. Do it in a pan. Do it with butter or vegetable oil.

Serve it with some normal burger toppings. It is phenomenal with an excellent kick. Freeze extras if you please. I haven't dethawed my extra, but the original recipe says they are fantastic on the reheat.

Van's Burgers Returns

There is not a lot on my calendar these days. The one thing that had been there for quite a long time, however, was the reopening of Van's Burgers. Van's Burgers is a number of things that I will describe below.

1. Open for only half the year. They open in April and close in October. 

2. Only open 3 days a week (Thursday-Saturday). They recently expanded their hours to be open from 11-7. It used to be 2.5 hours for lunch and 2.5 for dinner.

3.  A box shaped cart that's no bigger than my parents' tool shed in the middle of nowhere (in between a farm and a golf course).

4. A drive through in which you can expect to spend a significant amount of time in line.

5. Without question, the best fast food style burger in the Olympia area. Probably the best in all of Washington. 

I arrived on opening day at a few minutes after 2 P.M. While I wasn't naive enough to believe that there would be no line, I thought the lunch rush would have died down a bit. I pulled in and there were 11 cars in front of me. I stopped at the relatively new Vans Sweet Spot (another cart that you pass by in line on your way up to the burger cart - they've been open since last year, Van's itself has been open for 12 years) and got a peanut butter and hot fudge milkshake. Thick, chocolaty, an filled with real peanut chunks. It was divine. 

40 minutes from my arrival I finally made it up the line and ordered. Their signature Big Pete Double is fantastic and I've had it multiple times. With that in mind I decided to go for the everything... Big Pete with grilled onions, bacon, and a fried egg. The total cost was about $10 and it lived up to all my expectations. I also didn't need dinner. A truly fantastic experience. 

The Palak Paneer Odyssey

Palak Paneer is amazing. Gooey delicious spinach. The cheese that tastes like nothing at all. The little kick when it's spiced properly. The fact that it's almost always paired with naan. Yeah, it's amazing. That means it was time to try making it. Now that I've made it... I'm always buying it from now on. It's not that it was bad, just so much work for a product that's not quite as good as what can be found at Olympia's shining star of an Indian Restaurant - Curry Corner.

Most things needed for the recipe were simple. In fact the entire thing would have been a simple shop had I not decided that ghee should be substituted for olive oil in the recipe. Seems more authentic right? Drove to the only Indian Grocery Store in Oympia... closed for good. Drove to the other side of town to get some from the wall of groceries at Curry Corner... closed for the day. Luckily the co-op turned out to have everything I needed (meaning all of my traipsing around town was completely unnecessary). Mother also bought a plethora of organic-y things and enjoyed looking around. Winner.

The recipe I used can be found here.

The recipe I used for the naan is from the same website and can be found here.

Ingredients:

1 lb fresh spinach
8 oz paneer cheese, cubed
1 cup chopped red onion
1 cup tomato puree(d)
4 cloves garlic
1.5 inches ginger
6 thai chilis
1 tsp fennel seeds
4 cloves
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tbsp coriander powder (in retrospect, this seems like too much)
1.5 tsp curry powder
3 tsp ghee
salt

Now, get ready to use your food processor or blender... a lot.

Boil the spinach with the fennel seeds and cloves. Get the spinach, cloves, and fennel out and leave the rest of the water aside. Blend the spinach.

Grind onion, ginger, garlic, and chili into a thick paste. Should you please, this can be done in the blender.

Heat the ghee in a pot and add the chili / onion mixture. Cook until it starts to turn a golden color and then add salt. The onions will drop some of the oil at this point... so add the coriander and curry powder.

Mix it all up and then add the pureed tomato. (If you don't have tomato puree, you can stick a tomato in  the blender.)

Cook until it thickens up a bit and add the pureed spinach mix.  Turn the heat down to low. Cover and simmer for a few minutes. If it's thicker than you want, add some water from the set aside pot.

Now, boil either the set aside pot of flavored water with some extra salt or a new pot of salted water. Once it reaches a boil, kill the heat and add the cheese cubes. Let them sit for 3 minutes (this drains off the fat... I guess).

Add the heavy cream and cheese cubes. Bring it back to a boil one last time. Serve with rice and/or naan.

All the ingredients blended up and ready to go.

Palak Paneer and Whole Wheat Naan

Baked Coconut Prawns

Coconut shrimp are absolutely delicious. They are also expensive. Thus, it was time to give cooking them at home a shot. I looked at a lot of recipes and then generally decided to just go for it. For this reason, I don't have any precise measurements. Except I remember that we bought almost exactly 2 lbs of fresh, wild mexican black prawns from Olympia Seafood Company. Good choice.

Ingredients:

Prawns

Egg Whites

Cornstarch

Salt and Pepper

Ground unsweetened coconut

Flaked Coconut, sweetened (I would recommend toasting them before using... I did not)

Sweet Chili Sauce (for dipping)

The basics:

Deshell, Devein, and butterfly the prawns, but leave the tail on.

Dip in egg white.

Coat in a mixture of 75% cornstarch and 25% ground unsweetened coconut with added salt and pepper if you please.

Dip in egg white again. 

Dip in flaked coconut. 

Bake @ 350 degrees. Time will very depending on the size of the prawns.

Get some sweet chili sauce to dip them in, and enjoy.

My Life in Burgers: 1st Quarter 2011

I would like to present the roster of all the burgers I ate in the first quarter of this year. They are in no particular order and include the establishment, location, and one sentence description. Click on the link to check out the yelp review or blog post associated with it. You can also check out my burger list on Yelp that just hit the 50 burger mark.

Dexter's Drive In - Gig Harbor, WA

Over-sauced and under-seasoned.

Water Street Cafe - Olympia, WA

Wonderfully flavorful and juicy with too much bun.

Tugboat Annies - Olympia, WA

Overcooked beef with a plethora of other good things.

Six Olives Lounge - Tacoma, WA

Expensive and upside down.

Cascadia Grill - Olympia, WA

Strange soggy veggies and unmelted cheese.

Ranch House BBQ - Olympia, WA

Dried out and bland.

Hop Jacks - Lacey, WA

Strangely constructed and in need of better beef.

The Burger Express - Federal Way, WA

A large boring patty surrounded by a wealth of other quality items.

Crown Bar - Tacoma, WA

Excellent ingredients, just needs more of them.

Asado - Tacoma, WA

Best of the quarter. Chorizo and Beef blend that's perfectly seasoned and juicy.

Ed's Sunset Grill - Tenino, WA

Worst of the Quarter. Cash and Carry Burger.

The Spar - Tacoma, WA

Excellent burger in need of more veggies.

McDonalds - Olympia, WA

It was 10:35... Why not?

Gilt Club - Portland, OR

Twenty Six Dollar Burger.

Pick Quick - Fife, WA

Thin juicy patties packed with flavor.