A Burger the Size of My Head

If there's one thing I've learned in graduate school, it's that cooking is the BEST form of procrastination ever.

To be fair to myself, I was uber-productive today. I had 2 home visits for my dissertation, and I ended up getting more data than I had expected because I talked a father of twins into joining his wife in being part of my study (for some godforsaken reason I've decided to add dads to the mix to compare the way moms help their children talk about the past with the way dads help). So good news is I was able to round up 4 dyads in 1 home visit (yay for me!).

But as soon as all that data collecting was over, I needed a break. So, following my weekly grocery trip to whole foods, I embarked on a burger journey the likes of which I have never seen. Okay, maybe I'm being a little dramatic, but really, look at that thing. Homemade. Here's what I did.

Sunday Burger
1 poblano chile
1 lb ground beef
Salt + pepper
Olive oil
Cheddar cheese, sliced or shredded.
Guacamole (I make mine super simple with avocado, red onion, tomato and salt)
Burger buns

So, I fired up my grill to full heat and threw on the chile until it got blackened on all sides. After I removed it from the grill, I let it sweat in a bowl sealed with plastic wrap for about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, I seasoned the ground beef with salt and pepper, formed my patties, and brushed them with a little oil; the oil creates a nice crisp exterior when cooked. Those went on the grill next. I'd say about 5 minutes or less on each side, depending on thickness of your patties and your doneness preferences. While those are working, I assembled the guac.

A minute or so after I flipped the patties, I turned off the heat, threw the cheese atop the patties, placed my buns on the grill to toast, and closed the lid once more. Three minutes or so later, I took it all off the grill and let the patties set while I worked on the chile. This is easier than I expected; the skin of the chile slid right off and it wasn't too much of a pain in the butt to seed either. Then I just sliced that sucker up and began stacking up my bodacious burgers. As the picture above illustrates, I slathered guac on the bottom bun, followed by the pattie glistening with melted cheddar, then the chile slices, and finally the topper bun.

Holy guacamole chile burger! And it took all of 30 minutes before I was enjoying my first homemade burger of the season.

Nothing like firing up the grill

Tonight, I'm tired. Long, stressful day. So the menu is tres simple.

Chicken-cilantro sausage
Corn on the cob
Greens beans with shallots

With the exception of a few rainy days, here in beautiful Southern California, one is able to grill nearly every single day of the year. It's quite a privilege and I fully admit that. But there's just something about firing up the grill for the first time of the year when it really feels like summer. A day that makes you want to crack a beer and look through all your grilling mags to find that perfect menu for your next summer BBQ.

Like I said, though, I'm tired today. So throwing store-bought sausages and corn on the cob on the grill was still quite satisfying. The prep for the sausages and the corn on the cob is self-evident. What makes this dinner a little special is the verde salsa butter for the corn and the green beans.

Special butter
3-4 tbsp of butter, softened
1-2 tbsp of salsa verde
Mix them together and you get a spicy treat to spread on your grilled corn.

Green Beans with Shallots
1 large bunch of green beans, trimmed
1 shallot, sliced thin
Olive oil
Sea or kosher salt (iodized just won't do here, imo)
Par-cook the beans in boiling water for 3 minutes max. Drain. Heat the oil in a saute pan, and add the shallots. When the shallots just start to brown, add the green beans and toss around. Once plated sprinkle as much salt as you'd like on top.

I love grilled corn. The charred sweetness is quite a treat. And the green beans are a dish I make year-round, given the availability of beans here. And really who doesn't love a good sausage. ;-)

Tastes Like Summer

One of the many reasons I love California is TOMATO SEASON. For dinner tonight I made a whole wheat angel hair pasta dish with fresh tomato sauce and bruschetta.

The pasta sauce may be one of the simplest things I make but it is without a doubt also one of the most pleasurable, especially when tomatoes are at their peak in the summer. I have to admit that I cheated this week. I picked up my tomatoes from Whole Foods, because I missed the farmers market this weekend. No biggie, though, tomatoes are becoming so abundant that even the ones I get from my grocer still taste oh so sweet.

The bruschetta is made from heirloom tomatoes that I also poached from the store. It's still too early for heirlooms to be at the farmers market, but once summer arrives I can hardly bear to wait. (Last year, heirlooms came super late into the summer. It was a miserable wait, but they ended up sticking around until nearly Thanksgiving!)

Pasta Sauce

4 ripe on the vine tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped (I like to stick them over an open flame until the skins pop right off the flesh, becoming super easy to slide off the 'mater; also I seed the tomatoes over a bowl through a sieve to remove the seeds but retain the juices)
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
Salt + pepper (if you haven't treated yourself to freshly ground pepper, then do yourself and your loved ones a favor and go get a pepper mill immediately... best kitchen related purchase I've ever made.)
Several basil leave, torn or chiffonade
Parmiggiano-Reggiano

Throw together the tomatoes, garlic, salt, pepper, and basil; let it sit while you cook your whole wheat noodles.

Heirloom Bruschetta

2-3 heirlooms of different varieties, seeded and chopped with skins on
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
Salt + pepper
Basil leaves, chiffonade yet again
Baguette, sliced on a diagonal
Olive oil

Drizzle olive oil on the baguette slices and toast them in the oven or over a grill. Meanwhile, throw the tomatoes, garlic, salt and pepper together to marry.

Once the noodles are al dente and the baguette slices are toasty, toss the noodles and pasta sauce in a bowl; sprinkle with more basil and a nice parmesan cheese. Finally, spoon your bruschetta topping on your baguette slices; add more basil and olive oil if you like.

Ah, I just love the simplicity of a meal like this... where it's all about the flavors of the fresh ingredients. I wouldn't be surprise if this becomes a regular week night meal at the Kelly house.

Should be working right now...

So, the cool thing about being a student is that I should be working right now but, instead, I am creating this blog. Or maybe that's not so cool. You see, I am easily distracted, and since most of my work (paid or otherwise) occurs around a computer terminal, I find myself drifting (frequently) to gmail, facebook, twitter, and now this blog. But you know what they say about all work and no play...

Which brings me to this. I dedicate this site to the documentation of my life on a day-to-day basis for anyone who gives a shit. I will post a pic (hopefully) daily to give a little bit of insight into just what the heck the final year of a grad student's life looks like.

And if I'm lucky this new endeavor won't get in the way of my current endeavor of completing my dissertation in less than a year.

Ready. Set. Go!