Open-faced Roquefort Burger

CVS, H.H. Gregg, Menards, Sams Club, Kroger.  Calcium carbonate for George food (aka cat food) Check.  Freezer shopping.  Check.  Ingredients for George food.  Check.  Weird shopping list (full flavor molasses, parsnips, cheesecloth, apples, cucumber, red wine vinegar - see what I mean!) Check.  All done in two and a half hours.  Home at 8:30.  Blast.  Never thought about dinner.  Well, that's ok, I have the ingredients for cat food and his food has hamburger in it.  We can always steal a pound and run to the grocery on Thanksgiving.  Found out tonight that they're open until 3pm on Thanksgiving.  There must be a LOT of people who forget things and have to run out to the store.  Hopefully, I'm not one of them.  Ok, let's get out the new burger cookbook.  It's called Burgers and is by Paul Gayler.  We've had another burger from this cookbook and loved it.  So, start reading the beef recipes and every one sounds wonderful.  The tipping point was that I wanted an open-faced burger and I had kumatoes to use up (remember the tomatoes that are brown/black and remind me of the black brandwines?)  The open-faced roquefort burger was it.  The recipe called for half an onion, chopped.  I didn't want to waste half an onion so into a skillet with a bit of olive went the second half.  Then, on the voyage to get to the mayonnaise, I saw half an onion I'd wrapped up from Monday evening.  Into the skillet it went also.  The burger needed to be served on bread of some sort.  We had some antique muffins or some oatnut bread.  Well, if the muffins were toasted they'd be fine.  Yes, they were.  The recipe actually called for chilling the butter/cheese mixture.  Hey, when it's 9pm and you're just now fixing dinner chilling butter and cheese for a couple of hours is NOT an option.  Finally, the burgers were on the grill, the candles on the dining room table were lit, the onions were sauteed, the tomatoes were sliced, the mayo for the muffins was gussied up and we were ready to go. 

What did we think?  Five out of five.  I'll make these again any day.  The combination of the butter and blue cheese in the middle of a perfectly seasoned burger from the recipe plus the mayo mixture I dreamed up was just awesome.  If you're a tomato-holic like I am, these kumatoes are like a bit of summer on your plate.  They're not inexpensive but are worth every penny.  We find ours at Trader Joes.

Open-faced Roquefort Burger
serves 2

Ingredients:


for the burger:
1 lb ground beef (we used 80% lean)
1/2 sweet onion, finely diced
1 t Dijon mustard
1 t Worcestershire sauce
1 egg yolk
1 garlic clove, finely minced
2 T butter, softened
2 T blue cheese
1 T snipped fresh chives

for serving:
2 T mayonnaise
1 T blue cheese
2-3 t capers
1/2 t white truffle oil
pinch black truffle salt
2 small tomatoes, sliced into four slices each
1 large sweet onion, thinly slice
1 T olive oil
1 english muffin, split and toasted

Directions:

Mix the ground beef, egg yolk, diced onion, dijon mustard, Worcestershire and garlic together.  Separate the mixture into four patties. 

Mix the butter, blue cheese and chives together.  Form into two disks.  Place a disk on each of two patties. 

Use the other two patties as lids.  Seal the edges well.

Saute the onion in the olive oil until it's caramelized.

Mix the mayonnaise and blue cheese together well.  Add in the capers, truffle oil and truffle salt.  Set aside.

Grill the burgers.  We found about four minutes per side on direct heat on the grill was fine.  As the burgers are about done, toast the muffins. 

To serve, slather the muffins with the caper mayonnaise.  Top each muffin with a burger.  Then top each burger with tomato slices then sauteed onions.