Pimento Cheese Burger

When I was in college, I worked as a waitress in a fancy sandwich shop, in a fancy mall (think Saks and Nieman Marcus), in St. Louis. I don't remember much about it, except that wealthy people don't tip very well and I got to eat huge cheddar cheese burgers on my break. The cheddar cheese was more like a spread and it was scooped out with a smallish sized ice cream scoop. So, you had this big round ball of cheddar cheese that got all melty as you smooshed it down.

It was amazing and wonderful. I've spent many an hour fondly remembering those burgers. I'm happy to say that I can toss those memories aside and replace them with this. This burger. It is the burger of my youth only better, much better. OMG. Why have I never made pimento cheese before? Why? This is now my cheeseburger. My cheeseburger forever and ever.

I changed the recipe a bit based on what I had on hand. I didn't have any sour cream, so I substituted a little heavy cream. I also didn't have a 2 oz jar of pimentos, so I used one roasted red bell pepper.

Pimento Cheese Burger
Adapted from Cuisine at Home Weeknight Grilling

Pimento Cheese
1 cup sharp Cheddar Cheese, shredded
¼ cup mayonnaise
2 oz. cream cheese
Salt and cayenne pepper to taste
1 jar sliced pimentos, drained (2 oz)

Burgers
2 lbs ground beef
salt and pepper

Buns, lettuce, tomatoes for serving

Preheat grill to medium high.

In a food processor, combine the cheese, mayo, cream cheese and seasonings, and process until smooth. Add the pimentos and pulse to combine.

Shape the ground beef into 4 patties and season with salt and pepper.

Grill burgers on an oiled grate for 4 minutes, then flip them over and cook for 2 more minutes. Top with about ¼ cup of the pimento cheese and grill for 2 more minutes.

Serve on a bun with lettuce and tomatoes.

This recipe brings up an interesting point for cookbook authors. If you call something "Perfect Roast Chicken", what if later you come up with a different version. What are you going to call it? "The More Perfect Roast Chicken", "The Better Than Perfect Roast Chicken", "The Perfect in a Different Way Roast Chicken"?? See my point.

Anywho. I don't know if I would call this perfect, but it was up there in the top five at least. First of all, you pretty much can't go wrong with a recipe that calls for two sticks of butter. You could probably put two sticks of butter on lima beans, and even they would taste good. Maybe. But having said that, I didn't use two sticks, I only used one. No, not for health reasons, silly. I only had two sticks of butter and I needed one of the sticks for my Friday night popcorn. I don't ask for much out of life, but buttered popcorn on Friday night is a must. Sometimes it's the only thing I have to look forward to all week.

The chicken was wonderful, but the best part were the mushrooms. Why are not all chickens roasted with mushrooms? They were fabulous. The mushrooms were all buttery and chickeny. Really, if there is one thing I take from this recipe, it's the mushrooms, I am going to have a hard time roasting a chicken without mushrooms ever again.

Perfect Roast Chicken
From Tyler Florence: Stirring the Pot

Serves 4

1 4-5 pound whole free-range chicken
kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper
1 lemon, halved
1 garlic bulb, have through the equator (I just used 4 cloves)
1 sprig fresh rosemary
4 sprigs fresh thyme
2 sprigs fresh sage
¼ bunch fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley (about 4 sprigs)
2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature (or 1 if you have popcorn issues)
2 cups button mushrooms

Preheat the oven to 400. Rinse your chicken inside and out and pat dry. Season inside the cavity with salt and pepper and stuff with the lemon, garlic, and rosemary, thyme, and sage. In a food processor, process the parsley and the butter until well combined and season with salt and pepper.

Place the chicken breast side up in a roasting pan, tie the legs together, and rub the herb butter over the chicken. Place the mushrooms in the bottom of the pan. Roast the chicken and mushrooms for about 1 hour 45 minutes, or until the thickest part of the thigh reaches 180 degrees. Baste with the drippings and rotate the pan every 30 minute so that the chicken browns evenly. Remove the chicken from the oven, tent with foil and let it rest for 10 minutes.

This will be my entry for this week's Tyler Florence Fridays!

Now, that the weather is warming up, I try to grill every Saturday. And by grilling, I mean going out on my screened in back porch, opening the lid of my grill, turning the knob on the propane tank, and pressing the ignite button. I know, for some of you that does not constitute grilling, since there is no charcoal involved. But if I had to mess with the whole charcoal business, grilling would not happen very often around here. So, I sacrifice that authentic flavor for convenience. Accept my flaws, I have.

Do you have Cuisine at Home's Weeknight Grilling? If you don't, go get it now. Order it, do whatever you have to do. You will thank me later. This was wonderful. Completely, utterly wonderful. They recommended serving it with cheddar polenta, which I did. It was a great riff on a classic shrimp and grits.

Shrimp Skewers with Cilantro Pesto
Makes 4 skewers

Marinade and Shrimp
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup garlic, minced
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon paprika
zest of 1 lime, minced
salt to taste
16 jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined (mine were just large)

Pesto
2 cups fresh cilantro leaves and stems, packed
½ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons heavy cream
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
salt to taste

Preheat the grill to medium-high.

Combine the marinade ingredients in a bowl and add the shrimp. Toss to coat and let it stand for about 5 minutes.

Process all the pesto ingredents in the food processor, until smooth. Set it aside.

Thread the shrimp onto skewers. Reserve the marinade for basting.

Grill the skewers for about 1 ½ minutes per side, brushing on the marinade. Serve with the pesto.

This will be my entry for this week's Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Maninas at Maninas: Food Matters.

I love a challenge. Self-imposed or laid on me by someone else. I don't care. Judging from the myriad of book challenges and food events, I am not the only one who likes a few guidelines on their day to day living. My latest challenge..roast a chicken every week. I've been enamored with this idea ever since I read a Jeffrey Steingarten book where he mentions that he does this. It sounds like a great idea..perfect my skill at roasting a chicken, get lots of chicken carcasses for stock, and amass a wealth of recipes using cooked chicken. So, let the roasting begin, or at least until I grow tired of it and move onto a new a better challenge.

I began with Tyler. Kill two birds with one stone so to speak. Get my new Tyler Florence recipe in for the week, and roast a chicken.

This was excellent. The herb paste was very flavorful. I considered separating the breast skin and smooshing it under there, but I decided to follow the recipe as written. The chicken wasn't quite as crispy as I would have liked, but there were a lot of vegetables, creating lots of steam. But I'm not going to find fault with those vegetables, because they were amazing. The next day, I diced them up tossed them with some hot pasta and some Parmesan cheese for a light dinner. They had tons of flavor from the chicken juices and the herbs and lemon. That still left with me a couple of cups of shredded cooked chicken and a lovely carcass to use later!

The Ultimate Roast Chicken Provencal
from Tyler's Ultimate: Brilliant Simple Food to Make Any Time

Serves 4

Herb paste

leaves from 1 bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley
leaves from ¼ bunch of fresh thyme
leaves from 1 bunch of fresh tarragon
4 garlic cloves
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper

1 whole (3 ½ pound) chicken
Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper
1 lemon, cut in half, plus ½ lemon sliced paper-thin
3 big tomatoes, cut into wedges
4 small zucchini, cut into ½-inch thick rounds
1 red onion, thinly sliced
leaves from 4 fresh thyme sprigs
extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400.

Throw the ingredients for the herb paste into a blender and puree into a green paste.

Rinse the chicken with cool water inside and out and pat dry with paper towels. Set the chicken on a cutting board, and season the cavity generously with salt and pepper. Stuff the lemon halves into the cavity. Fold the wing tips under the bird and tie the legs together with kitchen string to give it a nice shape while it cooks (I didn't). Rub the chicken all over the herb paste so it's well coated.

Put the chicken in a large roasting pan fitted with a rack and scatter the tomatoes, zucchini, onion, lemon slices, and thyme around. Give the vegetables a big, healthy dose of olive oil - ¼ cup should do it - and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Put the chicken into the oven and roast for 1 hour; then check on it with an instant-read thermometer by popping it into the thickest part of the thigh. When it reads 160 the bird is cooked.

Take the pan out of the oven and let the chicken rest for about 10 minutes before carving so the juices have a chance to settle back into the meat. Serve with the roasted vegetables.

This will be my entry for this week's Tyler Florence Fridays. What's yours?

Since it warmed up this weekend, I decided to do some grilling. It's silly that I only wait till it's warm because I have gas grill and it's on a screened-in porch, so it's not like I have to spend time coaxing a charcoal fire, while being exposed to the elements.

Even though it was a Saturday, I turned to Cuisine at Home's Weeknight Grilling - Dinners from grill to table in 30 minutes. This worked out perfect because by the time I finished all the chores and errands I had to do on Saturday, there wasn't much time for dinner! As a side note, are you one of those people who has relaxing weekends? How do you do it? Between doing the laundry, grocery shopping, housecleaning, picking up cat hairballs, granola making, bill paying, and plant watering, there is not much time for relaxing.

So, anyway, back to my easy weeknight grilling on a weekend. It was fantastic! Really and truly fantastic. One of those recipes, where as you are eating it, you are planning when to make it again. You know the kind. As the mushrooms grill, they release their liquid and it really makes the filling even more flavorful. The only thing I would do differently is to just dot the cheese on the top before putting on the tomatoes. When I put it in the pan with the filling, it almost immediately started getting stringy and clumping. So, I spent some time separating it and trying to make sure each scoop had equal portions of cheese. We are all about equal portions of cheese in this house.

Sausage-Stuffed Portobellos with Spinach
Serves 4

topping
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
½ cup Parmesan, shredded
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 teaspoon kosher salt

stuffing
1 lb bulk Italian sausage (I only used 2 links)
1 cup onion, diced (I used one onion)
1 cup yellow bell pepper, diced (I used one pepper)
1 tablespoon garlic minced
¼ cup dry sherry
1 bag fresh spinach (10 oz)
1 ½ cup fresh mozzarella, cubed

Salt and pepper
4 portobello mushrooms (cleaned, stemmed, gills removed, and seasoned with salt and pepper)
3 roma tomatoes, thinly sliced (I used 2, but mine were big)

Preheat grill to medium-high.

Combine the ingredients for the topping and set aside.

Saute the sausage in 1 tablespoon of oil in a large saute pan over medium high heat. Cook until the sausage is almost cooked through, about 5 minutes. Add the onion, bell pepper, and garlic and saute for another 5 minutes.

Deglaze with the sherry and simmer until it is almost evaporated. Add the spinach and mozzarella (see my note above), and cook for 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper.

Spoon about ½ cup of the stuffing mixture into each mushroom. Gently press down on it to flatten it slightly and top with the sliced tomatoes. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top. Grill until the cheese begins to melt and the mushrooms are cooked through, about 5 minutes.

I am going to have to preface this recipe with an explanation. See, Tyler's original recipe was titled Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder with Salsa Verde and Grainy Mustard Mashed Potatoes from Tyler Florence: Stirring the Pot. Sounds good, doesn't it? Yeah, it sounded good to me too. But the recipe called for a 4 pound boneless pork shoulder. I knew I had a pork shoulder in the freezer, so I defrosted it and was ready to go. Except, that my lovely pork shoulder was wrapped in white freezer paper, and when I unwrapped it, I realized it was not so lovely. It had a big, weirdly angled, bone in it and lots of gristly veins of fat, plus it was only about 2 ½ pounds! Not the kind of pork roast to stand on it's own.

So, I moved on to Plan B. Except, I had already made the marinade. To make a long story short (I know, I know, too late), I marinated the roast in the original rub and roasted it. It was amazing!!! This is now my pork shoulder rub. Seriously this was the best flavored pork ever! I just couldn't serve it alone, so I ended up making a cilantro salsa and serving it as a taco with some Mexican rice and refried beans. It was still sooooo good.

Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder

1 4-pound boneless Pork Shoulder (don't make my mistake)
2 tablespoons fennel seeds
4 garlic cloves, peeled
¼ cup chopped fresh rosemary leaves
¼ cup chopped fresh sage leaves
4 tablespoons kosher salt (1 tablespoon for every pound of meat)
1 tablespoon fresh ground black pepper
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

For the rub, toast the fennel seeds in a small saute pan over medium heat until fragrant. In a food processor combine the toasted fennel seeds, garlic, rosemary, sage, salt, and pepper. Pulse to combine. With the motor running, gradually pour the oil through the feed tube to form a paste. Rub the herb paste on the pork. Cover the pork with plastic wrap and marinate in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours or overnight.

Place the pork, fat side up, in a roasting pan fitted with a rack insert. Preheat the oven to 325. Allow the meat to stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. Loosely cover pork with aluminum foil; roast about 3 hours, until juices fun clear (160 F). Let the meat stand for about 15 minutes before slicing.

This will be my entry for this week's Tyler Florence Fridays. Be sure and check out the weekly round-up on Friday, or better yet, enter it yourself! You know you want to try a Tyler recipe!

I bought a new cookbook. Don't berate me. It's the fault of the library. I was searching for new cookbooks, and I checked out The Bon Appetit Cookbook: Fast Easy Fresh to browse through. See, I had good intentions, but oh my, it's 1,100 recipes!!! Not only is it impressive in sheer volume (think... Bittman's How to Cook Everything..big), but it's all fast and easy. You know how there is weekend cooking and then there is I'm-so-tired-I-can't-believe-I-have-to-cook weeknight cooking. This may very well become my weeknight cookbook. Seriously, everything, easy peasy.

One of the first things I spotted was a recipe for Chicken with Tarragon Vinegar Sauce. Remember my tarragon vinegar? This sounded like a very good use for it. I know my picture for some reason showcases the shallots tumbling down over the brown rice, instead of the chicken, which is supposed to be the star of the show. Sorry. I don't know what I was thinking?? Maybe I was in a hurry because my husband was standing there waiting for his plate. Patience. You must have patience in my house.

Chicken with Tarragon Vinegar Sauce
Serves 2

2 tablespoons butter
2 chicken breast halves, with skin and bones
3 shallots, chopped
½ cup tarragon vinegar
1 cup low-salt chicken broth

1 ½ tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon

Melt the butter in a heavy, medium skillet over medium-high heat. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Add to skillet and saute until golden, about 4 minutes per side. Transfer chicken to plate and add shallots to skillet. Saute shallots for about 30 seconds, then add vinegar; boil until reduced to a glaze, stirring occasionally, about 2 minutes. Add the broth and return the chicken, skin side up, to skillet. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until cooked through, about 12 minutes.

Transfer chicken to a platter. Add tarragon to the drippings in the skillet. Increase the heat to medium-high; boil uncovered until sauce is slightly thickened, about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and serve over the chicken.

I made the recipe as noted, except that I didn't have any fresh tarragon, which I think would have added a nice fresh touch. I'll have to make this again in the summer. I also think this would be good with skinless, boneless breasts. Since this is a classic French Bistro dish, I am entering into Regional Recipes, hosted by Susan C at Open Mouth, Insert Fork.

For the past couple of weeks now I have received onions in my weekly CSA. For some odd reason, I haven't been using a lot of onions. I think I use onions more in the winter for soups and stews and casseroles. So these little baskets of onions have been piling up in my basement, and what to do when you have oodles of onions??? Why make French onion soup of course. I began making French onion soup in college in my crockpot. Yes, I had a crockpot in college. I was incredibly domestic. Others made fun of me for being so boring, but hey, guess who's apartment they always showed up for when I was making a pot roast or that ubiquitous pork chops in cream of mushroom soup??? Yeah, they weren't making fun of me while they were scarfing down homecooked meals.

The recipe that I use is still the one from the cookbook I had in college: Mable Hoffman's Crockery Cookery, Revised Edition. Now, actually that one on Amazon is a newer version! My book was published in 1975 and has a lovely burnt orange crockpot on the front (back when they were called crockpots and not the new hipper "slow cooker." My book is falling apart (kind of like me, we are both old, people), but it has served me well. I could go find a fancier schmancier recipe, but when the classics work, might as well stick with them, though I do change it up a bit, using stock instead of bouillon cubes and Gruyere cheese instead of Parmesan. Also, I love the name Mable, I think it needs to make a comeback.

French Onion Soup
Serves 4

3 large onions, thinly sliced (or a whole mess of small ones)
½ cup butter
6 cups beef broth
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
½ teaspoon salt
4 slices toasted French bread
¼ cup (or more, lots more) Gruyere or Parmesan cheese (or both)

In a large cast iron skillet cook onions in butter until lightly browned (I did for about 45 minutes). In slow cooker, combine onions, broth, Worcestershire sauce, and salt. Cover and cook on low 4-6 hours, or longer if need be. Preheat broiler. Ladle out soup into bowls, place a slice of toasted bread on top, sprinkle with cheese and broil until melted.

What was I thinking? I've mentioned several times that I am a lazy cook. I am. My idea of cooking is mixing some ingredients, pouring it over something, popping that in the oven, and then sitting on the couch and flipping through a magazine. Then when a family member walks by and raises their eyebrow at my sitting on the couch, I respond indignantly, "What??? I'm cooking!" Really, that's my favorite way to cook. I should have known when I found this recipe that it was probably not for me. There are 12 words in the title alone!!! My recipes usually don't even have 12 ingredients, much less 12 words in the title.

But, it grabbed me. Words like..salmon, slow-roasted tomatoes, and lemon oregano oil. Words that should have grabbed me...3 ¼ hours start to finish. Sometimes those words are okay, if they are immediately followed with "largely unattended." And really, I guess you could say that this recipe was sort of largely unattended, but it didn't feel that way. I kept thinking I was finished with a step, but then I wasn't. It was basically like this: cut up tomatoes and put in roasting dish, go outside and cut and wash fresh oregano and basil (fret for a few minutes about what size leaves they are talking about), heat up oil in skillet for garlic and herbs, cook for 1-2 minutes (heating up a skillet to be used for just 1-2 minutes is not my idea of fun), pour over tomatoes, roast for 2 ½ hours, think that the tomatoes are done, but no, you have strain the oil, chop some more oregano, zest and juice a lemon. Now the tomatoes are done, and yes they are good, but you get about 3-4 tablespoons of oil, for all of this work!!! Put tomatoes in fridge and lay down, you deserve it. Get up. Start to make couscous your normal way, realize that they want you to toast the couscous first. Toast couscous and prepare. Get salmon ready to roast. Roast salmon. It's not very attractive with all that fat oozing out, but plan on strategically covering it with tomatoes. Start to plate and realize that you still have to mince some black olives, realize that this recipe will probably never end.

I know I've complained a lot, and you are probably wondering why I'm posting it. Well, one..it's pretty. And it was good. Not good enough to make it worth all the work, but still good. I know some of you don't mind work, and can probably take this recipe to levels that I can only dream about. And two..I had it bookmarked, which makes it a prime candidate for Bookmarked Recipes hosted by Ruth at Ruth's Kitchen Experiments. Oh, and I'm not typing in the recipe, as you can imagine it's long. It would take me as long to type it in as it took to make it. You can find it here: Wild Salmon with Pearl Couscous, Slow-Roasted Tomatoes, and Lemon Oregano Oil at Epicurious. Yeah, I didn't have pearl couscous, so I used regular.

I have never had luck with growing thyme until this year. I finally read somewhere that the secret to growing it is to use it a lot. Keep it trimmed back and it rewards you with a lovely bushy, spreading little plant. Mine always used to get very woody and have a lot of die off in the winter. But now, the only hard part of growing thyme is using it! And gee..since thyme lends itself to just about every dish you could make, that shouldn't be too difficult, should it?

Hey, guess what??? I haven't bought a magazine in at least a week!! But I did preorder Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life. This is the first cookbook I've ever preordered and I have to say that it feels really good. It brings me a little bit of pleasure to know that in September, a new cookbook is coming my way! It's kind of like my own little present to myself. Where was I going with this...oh yeah, I haven't bought a magazine, so I've been looking through my latest Everyday Food, and one of the recipes I had marked to try was the Orange-and-Thyme Grilled Shrimp. I love this recipe! It's so simple and it really allows the flavors of the ingredients to shine through. I pretty much followed the recipe exactly, except that I didn't use light mayonnaise.

Orange-and-Thyme Grilled Shrimp
Serves 4

1 pound large shrimp (about 24), peeled and deveined, tails on
1 ½ teaspoons grated orange zest, plus ½ cup fresh orange juice
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for grates
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
Coarse salt and ground pepper
⅓ cup light mayonnaise

In a shallow dish, combine shrimp, 1 teaspoon zest, ¼ cup juice, garlic, oil, 1 tablespoon thyme, ½ teaspoon salt, and teaspoon pepper; toss to coat. Marinate in the refrigerator for 30 minutes (or up to 8 hours). Soak eight 8-inch wooden skewers in water 30 minutes before cooking. I marinated in a ziplock bag, but it does look prettier marinating in a shallow dish!

In a small bowl, combine mayonnaise, remaining ½ teaspoon zest, remaining ¼ cup juice, and remaining 1 teaspoon thyme; season dipping sauce with salt and pepper.

Heat grill to medium; lightly oil grates. Thread shrimp onto skewers, and grill, turning once, until shrimp are opaque throughout, 3 to 4 minutes. Serve shrimp with dipping sauce.

Pretty simple, huh? It's really very good and fresh tasting. This will be my entry this week for Weekend Herb Blogging created by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen. It is hosted this week by Archana of Archana's Kitchen.