Saturday's Cook

[Jake Wilson]

We worked up an appetite Saturday ripping out a bunch of moldy drywall in this room off our living room

I was sweeping the floor and noticed water leaking around the baseboard, so we got a plumber in to find the leak, it was below the slab (fun, fun, fun!), noticed mold on the drywall behind the cabinet and knew we had our work cut out for us

Time for some burgers....I made the meal while Nick ripped out the drywall, and the cabinets=:-(

Starting with the sauce-

Making catsup here...I started with 1/2 cup of white wine vinegar and a 1/4 cup sugar, cooked over moderate heat for 10 minutes until it carmelized, then added a finely chopped red pepper and a can of diced tomatoes (14 ounces?) then cooked over low heat for 25 minutes to reduce

grated about a tea spoon or so of ginger, to be added to the catsup after straining

using my Panini press for this cook...to grill the hamburger buns

Sliced a little better than a pound of onions to sautee...and make em golden=

after the catsup reduced I pureed it in the blender for a few minutes, then strained to sort out the fibrous bits

Now I add the ginger to the catsup, so the catsup is finished. The fresh sage I chopped a little better than a Tablespoon to add to my grilled (sautéed) onions

After the onions caramelized (I sautéed them in a few Tablespoons of EVOO) I added the chopped sage

Instead of using conventional hamburger buns for these burgers, I picked some fresh focaccia that morning from Panera in Ocala Fla. I brushed EVOO on both sides of the focaccia then grilled the focaccia in the Panini press for a few minutes




Best,


Jake
Reddick Fla.

 

[Enrico Brandizzi]

I suppose the best has to come......

 

[Jake Wilson]

Hamburgers are coming along...

this is a pound and a half of ground chuck from Publix grocers. I season with Lawry's seasoning salt and fresh ground black pepper. I've been using these two to season most everything I grill. When I was cooking at the Baltimore Oyster house in Big Pine Key Fla. (the lower Fla. Keys) in the mid 80's, our seasonings that we used was basically this but we used white pepper instead of black pepper. Why?...if we used black pepper, some of the patrons would see it in their food (we sautéed a lot of fish). Pepper is an essential seasoning so if they don't see it, they'll never know it's in there= rounding out the seasoning mix, besides white pepper and Lawry's seasoning salt we added a basily Italian seasoning, mixing the three together in a metal shaker. Ever since then, I have stuck with using Lawry's and fresh ground pepper for my basic *everything* seasoning

Grilling the focaccia on the Panini

Burgers on the grill! They're done at this point. If you look closely at the bottom right burger you can see juices running out the top of the burger. this is when I pull em for medium rare. Notice the charcoal pan is full of charcoal...I like to grill over a hot fire. Oh!, and I used Publix charcoal, which is fine for grilling, and I save the good stuff (KBB) for my WSM cooks=

here's my trusty grill!...or should I say my rusty grill?= She's a workhorse. I have a cover for it but more often than not, I grill at the end of the day, which turns into nighttime...the grill at that point is too hot to put a cover over it so it hardly ever gets covered, hence the rust you see. I spose I could wire brush it and hit it with some flat black paint...

the burgers each received a slice of asiago cheese

Burgers ready to eat! Not exactly your traditional cheeseburgers with grilled onions, but we ate em' none the less=

Since there were three of us eating, I divided the catsup into three bowls for dipping. this home made ginger catsup isn't thick enough to pour over the burger w/o it running off so we've found it works best to dip the burger into the catsup sauce



Best,


Jake
Reddick Fla.

 

[Jake Wilson]

I suppose the best has to come......

~~~10 pic limit per post...and I will have posted more than 10 pics to complete this thread


Best,


Jake
Reddick Fla.

 

[Bill Schultz]

Great looking Burgers Jake, good luck with the house repair. Been there, done that, more than once

 

[Rich Dahl]

When I saw the pictures of your home a shudder ran through me, been down the mold road, not fun! Great spin on the burgers though!

 

[Cliff Bartlett]

Those burgers are just fantastic. Boy, they looked good. Good luck with the home repair. I'm getting ready to tackle a similar project soon.

 

[John Solak]

Very nice looking burgers!!! I'm a huge fan of Lawry's too!!!! Not a huge fan of ripping out drywall though!!

 

[Dave Braxmaier]

There looking good ....

 

[Bob H.]

Your 2nd picture is funny looking, bottom of the drywall gone with the picture still hanging on the wall.
Your burgers not so funny though, they look delicious! Good luck with your project.

 

[John Sp]

Jake - being from the New Orleans area, I know a thing or two about ripping out sheetrock. What a PITA. Your burgers look great to me dude. I really like the ketchup recipe too - I'll be giving that a try soon...

Regards,

John

 

[Jake Wilson]

Great looking Burgers Jake, good luck with the house repair. Been there, done that, more than once

~~~thanks Bill!, yeah, if it involves drywall, I'd rather hang it then rip it out...wait a minute, hanging is a lot of work too, scratch that=

When I saw the pictures of your home a shudder ran through me, been down the mold road, not fun! Great spin on the burgers though!

~~~we built this house in 98', the metal roof has leaked (through loose fastening screws) but never a water leak coming up from under the slab. The plumber we used says he sees this type of repair often, on copper pipes like used when we built back in the late 90's, and this plumber told me anymore, because of this (pin holes in copper pipe buried in cement), he's using PVC & CPVC in slabs

Those burgers are just fantastic. Boy, they looked good. Good luck with the home repair. I'm getting ready to tackle a similar project soon.

~~~Thanks Cliff!, the burgers actually tasted better than they looked= I've made this meal in the past more than thrice. Not sure how I can improve on it but the wheels are always turning= I've often thought of blending my own burger, for fun and to see if I can make a burger like I ate at a golf club in south Fla. back on election night 2004. I was picking up a vintage Italian scooter (61' TV2) from a shop in around north Miami in the 96' Club Wagon van we had then. That van was notorious for the front brake calipers to go south as the pistons in them would katy waller. Anyways, as I was heading north out of Miami, I could feel the calipers grabbing onto the rotors not letting go. When I hit the turnpike where you pay to get on, they froze on me. I could barely limp through the toll gate and pull off to the side

I knew a tow truck would happen by soon and I didn't have to wait 5 minutes and an empty one gladly hooked me up, took me to the nearest Ford dealer and dropped me and my van off. It was too late in the day for the dealer to get me back on the road so I took the scooter out of the back of the van and set off to find lodging for the night, leaving the van at the Ford dealer

A few miles up the road I found this golf club with a course and rooms and booked a room for the night. Went to their bar's dining room and only the bar was open for food at that time of night. The hamburger I ordered was the best hamburger I ever had in my life and I said so to the bartender. He told me the owners of the golf club were in the restaurant biz (up north) and custom blend their own hamburger. Right then and there I knew one day I would try to emulate that burger coming up with my own blend that was close to theirs. That was 10 years ago (come this November) and I've yet to move forward with blending my own hamburger, but I figure I still have time left=

I bought a 7 quart Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer a few years ago so all I need is the attachments to grind meat. I'll give it a whirl one of these days=

Very nice looking burgers!!! I'm a huge fan of Lawry's too!!!! Not a huge fan of ripping out drywall though!!

~~~Thanks John! I not only keep a shaker jar of Lawry's Salt in my cupboard, I also keep a back up, for when that one runs out= I use their Garlic Salt too in a few recipes, especially in one of my chicken thigh marinades, so I don't have to press fresh garlic. There's enough garlic taste in the chicken, you'd never know it came from a bottle

There looking good ....

~~~Thanks Dave!, BTW, I see you're a Michigander! I spent the first 29 years of my life in Big D. Found out it was easier to shovel rain than snow so we've lived in Fla. ever since 85'=

Your 2nd picture is funny looking, bottom of the drywall gone with the picture still hanging on the wall.
Your burgers not so funny though, they look delicious! Good luck with your project.

~~~Bob!, that's actually a tapestry, I thought we picked it up in Mexico or Costa Rica way back when but wasn't sure so I asked Mrs. Jake where we got it (she knows everything= and she set me straight, told me she bought it from a shop in Key West after we moved up here, it hangs on a wooden dowel rod. FWIW we have another one (bird tapestry) with a different bird motif hanging on the wall in my home office, where the walls didn't receive any of the water damage (thank God!)

Jake - being from the New Orleans area, I know a thing or two about ripping out sheetrock. What a PITA. Your burgers look great to me dude. I really like the ketchup recipe too - I'll be giving that a try soon...

Regards,

John

~~~considering all that went on during and after Katrina, I'll bet you do have exp. ripping out soggy drywall, living/working in that part of LA John...

FWIW, the leak started below a cabinet, it was then we noticed the sheet rock behind the cabinet had water marks and mold on it, having to take the cabinet apart to get room to work on fixing the water leak. That was a week ago today we dug into all of this, so we knew we had more mold likely. Taking the cabinet out, the moldy sheet rock just kept going as the wood tacked onto the insulation so the sheet rock could be fastened, acted like a wick and sent water throughout that room. Nick our carpenter, is a young'n in his 20's and he works fast. Only took him two hours to rip all of that out (what you saw in the photos), and hauled it out of the house into one of our trailers, and swept up...I still need to mop the floor but it isn't that dusty and the sheet rockers will be coming in soon to hang new drywall so I may not get to it for awhile=

When you make this catsup, all the times I've made it in the past the ginger I used was on the dry side, grated up nicely and the sauce did not need any seasoning. This time, the ginger was fresher and wet and wouldn't really grate finely like I'm used to, since it obviously had more water content. The flavor was different too, not bad, just different. Now I buy this at my Publix grocer and get what they have in stock but this last catsup because the ginger was quite wet and tasted different, I added seasoning to the catsup (Lawry's Salt and fresh ground black pepper). Forewarned is forearmed! You may have to season your catsup, maybe not so if you can, look for a drier piece of Ginger. My exp. with them is the drier pieces are more flavorful. If they grate up w/o any water, I'd call that dry and are preferred (by me) over the wetter, fresher ginger


Best,


Jake
Reddick Fla.

 

[Tony R]

Nice job!!

 

[Tony R]

~~~10 pic limit per post...and I will have posted more than 10 pics to complete this thread


Best,


Jake
Reddick Fla.

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