6/28/10 - To market we go!

A Saturday at home means a trip into the city to the Greenmarket in Union Square. Its wonderful to visit my favorite stands and be inspired by all of the goodies. This week I had to be careful about sticking to my list though. I will be traveling on Tuesday though Thursday and then heading straight for vacation over the 4th of July. In my family, our tradition is a large family party on the 4th at our lake house in New Hampshire. When I was younger there would be upwards of 100 of us gathering together for a giant potluck buffet. But as we get older it becomes more and more difficult to all get together. While we still have many people gathering together each family tends to do their own thing for dinner.

I wanted to get a few things that could travel well so I could give my family a little taste of the Greenmarket. I decided that sausages were probably the easiest meat to transport and ready to grill up as a perfect lunch. Unfortunately even though we were up earlier than usually many of the vendors were already sold out! I guess you need to be even an earlier bird to catch the worm...uhhh sausage! We were able to get one of our favorites (the Bavarian Beef) and we did get some other things to try including some more of the baby fingerling potatoes which are just amazing when roasted! The rest of the goodies will become dinner tonight and tomorrow before our trip. Since we were running around I decided to throw some sliders together using some meat that I had ground a few weeks ago which made a delicious burger. On the side I served some swiss chard (from my CSA) and crimini mushrooms from the market (Bulich's Mushroom Farm) sauted with some shallots.
Click though to see our market finds!

2/6/10 - Freshly Ground Filet Burgers

Last week I sent Jeremy to the grocery store and there was a little confusion, I like to buy the full tenderloins of beef that are sold at many area stores. The best part about this cut (besides the price) is that they will cut it to your specifications in the store - either roasts or steaks which are so much nicer that the pre-cut steaks they have for sale. This time Jeremy went to the store and he forgot to mention the whole cutting down of the large piece of meat and just bought it as is. I had never butchered a large hunk of meat - until a few years ago I didn't even like cutting my own steaks! However there was $50 worth of beef sitting in the fridge that wasn't going to cut it self. Like everything however there was a youTube! The computer saves the day again... I don't think there is anything that that it can't do. Since I am far from an expert I ended up losing a good amount of meat during this process and tried to save it by grinding the left overs for hamburgers.

It was quite easy to grind the beef using my Kitchen Aid Mixer attachment which I got for Christmas. The burgers were delicious and worth the time needed to find my Kitchen Aid in its hiding spot (behind the oil in the bottom cabinet) and take out all the attachments.

I set up a little serve yourself topping bar that had swiss, munster and american cheese, potato or wheat bread and jalapeno, chipotle and spicy mustard, mayo, ketchup, green tomato relish and chimichurri sauce, as well as a side of crinkle cut chips.

My burger which is pictured above was served on wheat bread with munster cheese melted to each side. I topped the burger with spicy mustard, ketchup, green tomato relish and a bit of the chimichurri. Oh and maybe a handful (or two) of chips!