Chef McChris Strikes Again!

Donning his orange crocs my sweet husband prepared a fabulous dinner for me today. I've been putting a lot of hours in at work the past few weeks in preparation for our big annual fundraising dinner, Dining for a Difference and Chris has been taking care of a lot on the home front to help out (including many dinners and walking Fenway). 

 

He even took photos! Here is the ever-present and ever-necessary "Chef's Assistant." Crucial for most cooking excursions.

 

The meat patties "marinated" in a little bit of red wine and some seasoning (garlic, onion, italian seasoning) for several hours today. Other important ingredients: thick sliced bacon and cheese (in this case Land O' Lakes White American...next time more likely to use some good aged sharp cheddar or aged gouda.)

 

Once the patties are formed and the wife is home and starting on her work out, start a-cookin! Normally we'd use a real grill (and it's plenty warm here to grill with temps in the mid 60s) but the stupid HOA of the condos where we live have "outlawed" grills. We rent. We won't be living here for much longer. So a grill pan with a pannini press it is! 

 

Chris likes his buns toasted and browned. Just sayin'.

He chose some nice, soft and 'eggy' sesame seed buns for this burger. Delicious.

 

Browned on both sides, he added pre-cooked bacon. 

 

And then the cheese. Mmmm...cheese.

 

I had just finished my work out so was quickly assigned to make the fried eggs.

 

Here we are. Just before putting the top bun on (that is whole grain mustard you see on the bun. A little bit of barbecue sauce is on the bottom bun).

In retrospect: next time we will use a sharper, more flavorful cheese. Definitely recommend cooking the bacon until nice and crispy (brown = flavor). And seasoning the eggs better.

That said: this was absolutely delicious! And Fenway agreed (she got to lick our plates clean...not that there was much left on the plate to clean.)