Variation of a Favorite

Don't worry, I'm not in a ditch. :)

I've had a pretty distracting, tiring week. I wrapped up my old job and I start my new one tomorrow, and because they're letting me keep my anniversary week off at the end of August, I didn't take any time off between positions... so last week was full of errands... and at the end of the day, I didn't have the energy to sit in front of the computer. My apologies!

But enough of that!

My darling husband is something of a genius lately. Suggesting recipes or tweaks, and while he doesn't do any of the actual cooking, I've decided that he's onto something most of the time, so I go with it.

This is one of those occasions. We are big fans of Bobby Flay's black pepper crusted steak with goat cheese and chile sauce. The batch of sauce makes about five dinners worth, so we have little baggies of it in the freezer. And because we're on this Eat the Freezer kick, Dave wondered aloud to me if the goat cheese/sauce combo would work well on a burger... because we had a couple packages of ground beef... I thought it sounded worth trying!

I didn't do too much to the meat, just mixed in some Worcestershire sauce, made patties, then crusted it with the same black pepper/salt/cumin mix that the steak recipe calls for. I seared them on the stove and then finished them in the oven.

A few minutes before they were done, I spooned a little home made goat cheese (I got the kit from New England Cheese Making Supply Company) (which was really easy to make, btw) on top of each burger.

Burgers with cheese went back into the oven until the cheese got smooshy. Meanwhile, I toasted the buns in the broiler (and didn't burn any this time). To finish, we spooned some of the chile sauce (heated) onto the burger and bun. I served with some green beans (we'd gotten a ton from our CSA) and some oven fries.

Last thoughts: I married a wonderful man. This dinner was a lovely variation of a meal we adore, and its almost even nicer, because we didn't have to spend the money on actual steaks! I highly recommend making this chile sauce, because I'm sure we're going to try to find more ways to eat it.