Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Last night was an edible failure of sorts. We went after Juicy Lucys. We made our own "melty" cheese slices using the recipe from Serious Eats. Then we followed their guidance on how to form the burgers. I love making my own cheese slices, we used Double Gloucester and a bit of Cheddar since the recipe calls for 12 ounces and I had 8 ounce packages of each. They do well on top of burgers, but for some reason, they were not very oozy inside the burgers. Serious Eats guide on forming the burgers worked very well, no leaks at all, the cheese was very well contained.

The four ounce burgers were initially cooked in a toaster oven and the exterior finished by deep frying, my families current favorite method. Since the burger was full of cheese, we couldn't Thermapen it for internal temps. They overcooked a bit. Deep frying was for a short 35 to 40 seconds.

We will try again next week maybe, but I will do the burgers sous vide, so the inside is Medium Well and the meat remains juicy. I may have to splurge and buy the commercial sliced cheese for the proper "melt" profile. They were not horrible, more like what we end up buying if we eat at a fast food restaurant. Just not the nice oozy cheese coming out after the first or second bite.

Mary,

Bath mat?

Limes are currently 10/$1.99 here, which is pretty cheap considering how far we are from the nearest lime plantation.

Killed the basil in our grow-op and made pesto, served with pasta, a little garlic bread and endive cooked in some brown butter.

To bathe in the cheap lime juice. Like a pickled Cleoptra.

Mary

Tonight: Cornell Chicken, Grilled Romaine with Blue Cheese Dressing, and 3-Bean Salad with St. Andrews Champagne Vinaigrette. Absolutely fantastic. Mascerated strawberries with shortbread biscuits in the works.

Loving this gorgeous weather and the fresh bounties that are coming in!!!

Nance

Mudbugs!



Rather unexpectedly, our grocer had live crawfish. Emergency change of dinner plans!

Doubt we'll do that again this year, but it was fun once. Oh, and Kris can shell and eat crawfish about 3 times as fast as I can. She ate fully half of them; the Other Woman and I split the rest.

I just love you vegans

I made Bon Appetit's "Farfalle with Spinach and Garbanzo Beans" with some tweaks (lots of spices, extra garlic, chopped tomatoes, a little white wine, etc.)
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/ ... -Beans-126

Chi Dynasty Chicken Salad (posted elsewhere on this BB) - now a staple in our house 'cause its so damn good, easy and really does taste like we remember from the restaurant. Key is to follow the amounts stated in the recipe (but you can go over a bit with the cilantro). I also use Chinese Noodles instead of preparing my own and skip the peanuts (don't remember them being served in the restaurant). Yum, so good. And nice to have an easy to prepare and very satisfying dinner after spending 6 hours working in the garden.
Nance

Cook's Country Crispy Breaded Pork Chops with Parsley-Caper Sauce, salad with apricot honey mustard dressing and smashed potatoes. I wasn't wild about the parsley-caper sauce, but it was okay. Good and quick for a weeknight.