Friday, August 6, 2010

Burger Club Challenge: Bobby Flay

Think about a time when you have moved.

You know that feeling when everything has been packed and you are doing that last walk through, making sure you got everything. You look at the empty rooms and feel a bit melancholy because you realized that despite the barren floors and walls, they are not empty. The memories of times spent there flood the void.

So you'll excuse me feeling a bit sad as I cooked my last meal on our deck tonight. I had cleared everything off of the deck except the Big Green Egg, for tomorrow's demolition.

[Cue music: It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday]

I smoked my first pork butts, ribs, and brisket all on this deck. There are burn marks and grease stains on this deck and it has worn them as a badge of honor. The best meals I have ever eaten and some of my catastrophic failures were cooked on this deck. As much as I'm looking forward to my new deck, I'll be verklempt as it is torn down tomorrow night.

For the "last dance" tonight, I did my entry for the Burger Club Challenge at Cinnamon, Spice and Everything Nice. This month's challenge is rather flexible - any burger by Bobby Flay.

I decided to make Bobby's Sante Fe Burger. You can view the recipe here. This is basically a chili verde burger with a cheese sauce and blue corn tortilla chips crumbled on top to "crunchify" it in Bobby's terms.

I charred the pepper on all sides... (Tip: Don't be bashful about getting it extra charred when grilling or broiling your peppers. If you only get spots here and there, you are going to have a harder time peeling it even after resting it in a bag.)

Grilled the burgers....

And while the burgers rested I made the queso sauce. A part of the challenge is to do the recipe AS EXACTLY AS POSSIBLE so your rating will be of the dish as written. I did vary one tiny bit with the sauce. Instead of salt and pepper, I used a bit of my homemade chili powder from last week.

My Rating (based on the challenges 4 point system)
3 Stars = Liked and will make again
I probably would have gone with a 4 Stars = Loved! Will make often rating but I made a similar sauce on my own last year that uses my smoked pepper jack cheese and that sauce outshines this one. The crunchiness of the tortilla chips didn't distract like I thought they might and Alexis just LOVED them.

OK all you grillers and Eggheads. Get over to Reeni's blog and enter this challenge. I'm interested to see which Flay burger you make and what you think of it.