9/13/08 -- Burger and Fries

I had half a potato leftover from this morning's Spanish Omelette, and my wife tells me we need to use up the bag of onions in our kitchen, so I got some ground beef, and made myself a burger and some fries.

Let me start with the fries. I took my half-potato and sliced it into strips. Then I heated up a little bit of olive oil in a frying pan on medium-high heat (I tried high heat this morning, and got smoke -- lesson learned), and essentially stir-fried the strips of potato. This is still a bit of a wonder to me. I always associate fries with vats of oil and a huge mess, but this was remarkably easy. The fries came out nice and soft on the inside, but could have been a little crispier on the outside. Next time, I'll turn the heat up just a notch, and hope I don't get smoke again. Still, they tasted good.

So, on to the burger. I started with somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of a pound of lean ground beef, and added a few things: half a slice of chopped onion (not much progress on the bag, but it's just me tonight, so I did what I can), a small clove of finely chopped garlic, and some Gorgonzola cheese crumbles that I found in the fridge. The resulting patty got place in my new Foreman grill* at 350 degrees for 7 minutes. This proved to be a bit too much time, as the burger ended up a bit dry. The Gorgonzola flavor remained, though, and was quite good.

No real veggies in this meal, for which I will no doubt be taken to task, but nevertheless, pretty satisfying. I'll definitely try these again, making a few tweaks in the process.

*Story about the grill: Recently both our old grill and our roommate's grill had some issues. We had a big grill, which developed a dead spot on the top cooking plate. He had a small one, on which the top plate died completely. Both were several years old (his much older than ours), and were well-used. They were also a pain in the elbow to clean, because they had to be done by hand, and, of course, couldn't be immersed. Shortly after the little grill died, Target had a sale on the newest generation of Foreman grills. So we donated ours to Goodwill, tossed the roommate's in the trash, and got a new grill. Two advantages: First, we gained a little bit of much-needed shelf-space, and second, the new grill has cooking plates that can be removed and put in the dishwasher!