Caprese Burger

Wow, we’re are so behind in posts this July. 

It’s because July has been full of this...

Congratulations to my sister Tracy & her new husband Mike



and the past two weeks lots of this.....

so having time to photograph and write about our cooking adventures hasn’t been as high on our priority list as usual.

But there have been some great meals and one includes this burger. We love Caprese salad all through summer at our house so this Caprese Burger hit just the spot. A tasty version of two great summer meals all in one.

This was a definite hit one of the nights during our family vacation on the river.


Recipe;

Caprese Burger adapted from Food & Wine August 2012

1 Cup prepared pesto sauce

1 lb. ground chuck

1 lb. ground sirloin

8 oz. fresh mozzarella, cut into 6 slices

6 Hawaiian style hamburger buns

2 tomatoes sliced

Mix 1/4 cup pesto to a bowl. Add the ground beef, a pinch of salt and gently knead to blend. Form the mixture into 6 patties. Brush each of the burger patties with olive oil.

Start grill, rub with oil. Grill burgers over med-high heat for 3 minutes. Flip. Top w/ mozzarella and close the grill. Cook 3 minutes longer until medium rare. Grill buns lightly toasted then spread some pesto on the bottom bun. Top w/ burgers, the tomatoes and the remaining pesto. Close burgers and serve right away.

Grilled Eggplant Caponata Bruschetta

After our two week road trip we were pretty excited to come home and spend a little time watching some Food Network and just being in our home. And of course if G wants to watch food shows you can count on the fact that there will be some Bobby Flay on the TV.

And on this particular  day we watched an episode of his BBQ Addiction focused on Sicilian food. It spiked our desire to get back to the kitchen. To be honest after being on the road for two weeks and knowing that we would be leaving for another two weeks of vacation within the week left us feeling less than motivated to either grocery shop or cook. But this recipe for Grilled Eggplant Caponata Bruschetta just seemed to spark the motivation we needed to stop the week of take out meals.

Bruschetta is a dish that we really love to make for get togethers especially. But since we've been laying off the bread the past few months its something we haven't been indulging in. So maybe that's another reason it really inspired us to make it..(we've allowed our self to step off of our Paleo lifestyle for the month of July given we are traveling/vacationing all but 5 days of the month...and it's just too hard to keep to it for us when we are not in our daily routine.)

We found the best eggplant and Roma tomatoes we could to get started. 

We sliced them, brushed them with olive oil and seasoned them with salt & pepper before grilling them.

This grilling made the dish pretty spectacular. Another perfect aspect of this dish is the grilled bread. Oh yeah...grilled bread brushed with olive oil...how could we go wrong?

Unlike Bobby we actually chose to smear our bread with ricotta before topping it with caponata. (His version uses ricotta salad as a crumble on top.)

The caponata on top of the ricotta smeared grilled bread created such a fantastic flavorful mouthful of crunch, sweet and sour. 

We loved this dish so much we decided we'll actually make it to take to a friends wine gathering later this week. It's great with wine. 

We enjoyed the grilled bruschetta with a 'new to us' Washington Chardonnay, Lone Birch. That  wine was citrus forward and actually not bad with this dish.

The link to recipe:

Grilled Eggplant Caponata Bruschetta with Ricotta Salata