Blue Cheese Burger with a Whiskey Cherry Sauce

I'm not sure if I'll be able to eat a burger with lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles again without missing this one.  Last week my husband had a craving for burgers.  I had gone to Central Market this year for grill week and tried a burger that had a grilled peach on it.  I loved it and immediately made a note to try this the next time we have burgers.  As I was getting out all the typical burger condiments, I realized we had some leftover cherry sauce that I had made to go on top of pork chops earlier that week, lavender mustard I had brought back from Paris a while ago, spinach that was starting to look droopy, and some leftover blue cheese from a wine and cheese party I hosted for my girlfriends.  Thus, the perfect burger was born!! 

Immediately after my first bite I had to text two of my friends right away to tell them how wonderful it was and beg them to make something similar SOON!  Below is how I made my burger.  Of course my husband ended up topping his burger with and egg and wouldn't come near mine with the blue cheese, so the amounts listed below are for 1 burger, except the cherry sauce (which would probably be good for about 4 burgers).  The burger ended up being opened faced because I wasn't terribly hungry, and we were out of hamburger buns so I made it on some whole grain bread we had.  I'm not sure if this would be a good pick up and eat burger anyway, so it worked out well. 

Ingredients:

 

Burger:

Ground beef, formed into patties

whole grain bread, toasted

lavender mustard, or some other kind of good mustard

2 cups spinach

1/2 peach, sliced

blue cheese

 

Whiskey Cherry Sauce:

1 tsp oil

1 shallot

1 cup cherries, pitted

1/4 cup whiskey

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

1/2 tsp dry mustard

1 Tbs red wine vinegar

1 1/2 Tbs honey

4 Tbs water, divided

1 tsp cornstarch

salt & pepper

Directions:

Whiskey Cherry Sauce:

In a small sauce pan heat oil over medium heat and saute shallot until soft. 

Add the cherries, whiskey, vinegar, mustard, thyme, honey, 2 Tbs water, and a pinch of salt. 

Bring to a simmer and cook 15 minutes, slightly mashing the cherries a bit with a spoon. 

Separately make a slurry with the cornstarch and water and add to the cherry mixture and stir constantly until thickened.

Burger:

Grill your burgers to the doneness that you like.

Slice your peach and grill for 3-4 min per side.

Add about 1/4 of the cherry sauce, and 2 cups of spinach to a saute pan and saute until the spinach is wilted.

When the burger is almost done, I like to top it with the blue cheese before I take it off the grill so the cheese gets a little melty.  Then I top it with the grilled peach slices before placing it on a toasted slice of bread with the lavender mustard (or any other type of mustard you prefer). 

Finish the burger off with the spinach and cherry sauce saute and get ready for pure bliss!

Even though I am not a huge meat/burger person, I think we will be having burgers again sometime very soon so I can make this again.  :)

Please excuse the quality of the pictures.  Someone (being myself) had all the camera's elsewhere as I made this burger so I grabbed my husband's Iphone and made do.  :)





The BEST chocolate cake ever!

Last weekend was a family filled weekend.  On Saturday, my newest nephew was baptised and I got to make a cake for that celebration. 

After the baptism, I got to watch my niece get soo excited about eating broccoli.  She is only nine months old and rejected the broccoli that had cheese sauce on it, and loved the plane broccoli!!!!!!!  Her parents are obviously teaching her good eating habits. :-)

On Sunday we had a book signing party for my grandmother and I got to make a cake for it.  My aunt has worked tirelessly for the past 4 or 5 YEARS writing up my grandmother's memoirs, finally finished, and had them put into a book. 

My grandmother is definitely someone who I think if we grew up together we would be inseparable.  She is hilarious!  She enjoys movies like "Dumb and Dumber", and "Legally Blonde". She taught me how to play London bridges, backgammon, and bake bread.  When my parents went out of town, we would get to spend the weekend at her house, I would get to sleep in this huge room with a California King size bed, and thick curtains that didn't let an ounce of light in.  My grandparents would let me sleep in as long as I wanted, and then when I got up, my grandpa would always treat us to donuts for breakfast from the local bakery.  I spent a lot of time at my grandparents house growing up, especially when we moved to the country and they lived in town.  I would go to their house after school in between all my extra-curricular activities.  Teaching my grandmother the new slang was ALWAYS entertaining.  I remember one time I was whining to her about going to work and having this one annoying guy hit on me.  She was absolutely appalled and told me that I should punch him back!  She thought he was literally hitting me!
This cake has appeared in many forms. If I ever have an occasion where a chocolate cake is requested this is the one I make.  The first time I made this was for my cousin's birthday years ago. 

Her father, lets just call him uncle chef, complimented me on it, so I knew I had a winner. 

Over the years, every time I make it, it never lets me down.  It's graced many birthday tables:

A baby shower:

...and most recently, my grandmothers book signing:

For the occasion, I chose the most solid recipe I have. It is the Hershey's chocolate cake recipe that I have only very slightly modified to make my own. The first couple of times I made it, I thought I had messed it up, but it ends up turning out perfectly moist every single time! 

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar

1 3/4 cups flour

3/4 cups cocoa

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1/2 cup oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup boiling water

1 tsp instant coffee

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350-F.  Line two 9-inch round baking pans with parchment paper and then grease and flour them.

Mix all the dry ingredients except for the instant coffee.

Add the eggs, milk, and oil to the dry ingredients and beat for about 2 minutes.

Separately add instant coffee to the boiling water.  Mix the boiling water into the rest of the batter.  (Note that the batter will be really thin.)

Pour batter into prepared cake pans.

Bake 30 to 35 minutes until done.  Cool 10 minutes in pan, and then place on wire racks.  Once cakes are completely cool, ice them and enjoy.  Though I want to throw out the fact that this cake is moist enough that it's just as tasting with no icing and some powdered sugar sprinkled over it for presentation.

Once you try this cake you will understand why I have no desire to try making any other chocolate cake recipes. It is so easy to put together and it comes out perfect EVERY time!

Happy Baking!

Amanda's Tips:

Most recipes tell you to bake cakes until the toothpick comes out clean.  Though that's a way to make sure the cake is done, the problem with that is it usually means it's slightly overdone.  The cake will continue to cook just a bit once you pull it out of the oven, so it's best to pull it out when there is just a tad left on the toothpick. 



Grilled Beef Fajita Salad

I'm not a very good summer cook.  I love the abundance of fruits and vegetables in season, but somehow I always find myself turning on the oven to cook them.  With our work and training schedules I find myself assembling casseroles and such on Sunday night that can easily be thrown in the oven Monday after we get home from work and then we eat on the leftovers for a couple of days.  It works out well for us that way.  The only problem is that this involves turning on the oven every couple of days.  I saw the idea for grilling Romaine lettuce on one of my favorite blogs, and thought that this may be perfect for my first stove top grill this summer.  It was so easy to throw together that we ate this three nights in a row for dinner.  Leftovers made pretty good lunches as well.

Ingredients:

Salad:

2 hearts of romaine

1 flank steak

1 cup corn

1/4 cup onion, diced

1/4 bell pepper, diced

1 small tomato, diced

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/2 Tbsp Olive oil

Dressing:

2 Tbsp Olive Oil

4 tsp red wine vinaigrette

1/2 tsp chipotle chili powder

Marinade:

1/2 cup onion, diced

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 jalapeno, minced

1 1/2 Tbs lime juice

1 cup beer

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1 1/4 tsp cumin

1 Tbsp soy sauce

Directions:

Mix all the ingredients for the marinade, put in a bag, and let marinade overnight.

Cut the tops and very carefully trim the bottoms off the romaine hearts making sure to keep enough of the bottom in tact to hold the leaves.  Cut the romaine hearts in half lengthwise.  Mix the ingredients for the dressing and brush all over the romaine halves. 

Meanwhile mix the corn, onion, and bell pepper with the salt and pepper.  Heat 1/2 Tbs Olive oil in a medium skillet, and add the mixture and saute until heated through, about 5-7 minutes.

Grill the steak for 4 to 6 minutes per side. Remove steak and let rest for 5 minutes. Slice thinly against the grain.

Grill all sides of the romaine hearts until just browned on all sides (about 3-4 minutes per side).

Top romaine hearts with corn mixture and sliced steak.  Garnish with cilantro and avocado.

Enjoy!

Stuffed Zucchini

 

Recently Raymond's best friend moved from Dallas to Minnesota. We definitely miss hanging out with him, so when was back in town for a few of days to close out his house I excitedly told Raymond to invite him over for dinner one night. Little did it occur to me at the time that since we were out of town the first couple of days he was back, that would mean we were having him over for dinner the very next day as that was his last night in town. For those of you who don't know me that well, I like to have several days to think about the menu, change my mind several times, and go grocery shopping. This time I had the span of about 6 hours to go through this process. I had already planned on making an Italian flank steak and corn on the cob. That would be fine for just Raymond and I, but since his friend was coming over, I felt that I had to come up with something else to go along with dinner. Lucky for me one of my co-workers who is in a CSA and has had trouble keeping up with her produce brought some up to work to share that next day. She had a beautiful zucchini that I quickly snatched up. With that I decided to stuff it to round out our meal. I enjoyed it so much so that I bought some cute little 8 ball squash the next week at the farmers market to stuff for a dinner party that next weekend.

After searching through recipes trying to find ideas for stuffing the zucchini I became increasingly worried about the amount of filler ingredients that were being used. I saw one recipe with 3 cups of breadcrumbs and 2 cups of cheese! That definitely takes the healthy right out of that! I decided to sub out some of the breadcrumbs with quinoa, and use a stronger cheese so that I could use very little. The end result I thought was quite fantastic and the quinoa and eggplant provide enough protein that this could easily be served as a main dish along with a salad for a complete meal. Note this makes a TON of stuffing and can be halved.

Ingredients:

3-4 large zucchini or equivalent
1 medium onion, diced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
6oz diced mushrooms
1 diced red bell pepper
1 medium eggplant, diced
2 medium tomatoes, diced
2 Tbsp olive oil
3/4 cup quinoa, dried

1 1/2 cup chicken broth

2 eggs, lightly beaten

3 Tbs tomato paste
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs

2 Tbsp fresh breadcrumbs

2 Tbsp Parmesan cheese

2 Tbs Parsley, plus more for garnish

2 Tbs Basil, plus more for garnish

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Dice the eggplant into 1/2” pieces and cover with salt.  Let sit in a colander for 30 min.

Slice the zucchini in half lengthwise. Use a spoon to scoop out the center down to about 1/2″ thickness, reserving the insides. Cut up the reserved zucchini it if it’s not too seedy. If it is, I recommend using another small zucchini for the filling (this is what I did) and cutting it into 1/2″ dice. Put the zucchini halves into a large baking dish.

Dice into 1/2″ pieces the onion, tomatoes, mushrooms, bell peppers. Mince the garlic.

Thoroughly rinse the eggplant.

Toss all of the vegetables, including the reserved zucchini, with the minced garlic, 2 Tbs of olive oil, and salt and pepper.

Spread on a baking sheet and roast until tender, about 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile rinse the quinoa, bring 1.5 cups of chicken broth to a boil, add in quinoa, lower the heat, and allow to simmer for 15 minutes.  Fluff with a fork.

Remove the veggies from oven, reduce heat to 350, and allow to cool until you can touch it (we’re going to add in the egg next and you don’t want it to cook as soon as it touches the hot vegetables).

In a large bowl, mix together the quinoa and the vegetables. Mix in the beaten egg, ¼ cup Parmesan cheese, ½ cup breadcrumbs, 2 Tbsp. fresh basil, and 2 Tbsp. fresh parsley. Scoop it into the zucchini halves, mounding up the filling.  Top with a sprinkle of breadcrumbs

Cover with foil and seal the edges around the baking dish (this will keep it moist and help steam cook the zucchini). Bake for 45 minutes or until the zucchini is tender (but not mushy!). Remove the foil and turn the oven to broil. Sprinkle the top with grated Parmesan and place it under the broiler for a few minutes until lightly browned. Remove and garnish with more fresh basil.

Enjoy!