Let me start off by saying that I have flown over Cuba, smoked real Cohibas, listened to Gloria Estefan (forcibly), have a Cuban-born coworker, but never actually been to Cuba and am not an expert on Cuban culture or cuisine by any means.  But, I love pressed cuban burgers.  I have been wanting to make this for a while and La Cense gave me good reason.  Their lean, healthy, individually pre-packaged ground beef patties were great pickins for this dish.  Below is my recipe with these great tasting patties (well, 2 were La Cense and 3 were 80% lean)Ingredients

• 1.5 lbs ground beef for 4 good sized burgers
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 3 cloves roasted garlic, pureed (see below)
• Dijon mustard
• 4 hamburger buns with sesame seeds
• 8 slices thin slices of Provolone (true Cuban-style would be Swiss, but I like provolone) 
• 4 thin slices of smoked ham
• 2 dill pickles, sliced into 1/4-inch thick slices (you can buy a jar of long sliced pickles)
• Olive Oil 

Roasted Garlic Mayo (prep ahead of time)

Remove the skin of 3 large garlic cloves.  Cut the top off (about 1/8 inch).  Place the cloves in a foil packet and drizzle some olive oil over the garlic cloves, then season with salt and pepper.  Wrap in foil and bake for 45 min at 300 degrees.  Remove from oven, and use a spoon to smash the cloves.  Combine the mayonnaise and roasted garlic in a small bowl.

Season the burgers with salt and pepper on both sides and cook on the grill over medium heat for about 10 minutes per side to reach medium-rare.  The La Cense burgers (on the left) cooked a bit quicker since they were a little more lean and you will get more flare-up on burgers with more fat (you can see this in the photo).  

Prepare a foil packet (lightly oiled) for the burgers in the following layers:

• Bun
• Mayo/Mustard
• 2 slices of pickle 
• Cheese
• Ham 
• Burger
• Cheese
• Mayo/Mustard
• Bun 

Wrap the burgers in the foil and press them flat with your hand (they should lose about 2 inches of height).  Put them back on the grill for about 4-5 minutes until the cheese melts and the buns get a little toasted. Serve up with your favorite Cuban side dishes.  In this case, I served some simple black beans.  And who knows if tossed salad with Italian dressing is actually Cuban, but I seriously doubt it.

-GrillDude 

Today, I am here to share some grilling woes with my Grill”Dud” Kabobs.  Man, is it tempting to just grab that pre-made kabob from the meat section.  All the meat and veggies are skewered nicely and seasoned to make these things ready to slap on the grill.  In fact, for the the novice, they even come with brief cooking instructions on the sticker.   And finally, the buy-one-get-one-free offer sealed the deal for me (this red sticker should have been the RED FLAG).

We bought chicken kabobs and beef kabobs.  Throwing the chicken kabobs on the grill a few minutes before the beef helped me get things off the grill at the same time.  The timing would make Chef Ramsey proud.

The great thing about cooking kabobs is that you can cheat by eating a chunk of meat to check for doneness.  Never admit that you are cheating though…..just claim that you are sampling your creation.  Before you know it, you will have eaten a whole kabob!  So, in the spirit of sampling my creation, my second sign of trouble was the slightly chewy beef. 

The wooden skewers did get a little burnt, so if you were preparing the kabobs yourself, you should soak the wooden skewers for about 1 hour prior to using them.

These kabobs had big chunks of meat on them and I was pretty proud that they were cooked to perfection and ready to head to the table.  At this point, I am not sure if I am lucky or unlucky to not have Chef Ramsey in my kitchen.  Going from the serving station to the table would have sent him into a frenzy of censored bleeps and the chewy, tasteless kabobs would have never made it to the table.  But….they did.

The best (or at least the most honest) critics are two kids under 7 and a hungry wife.  I didn’t get any censored bleeps from my diners, but their tired jaws were still able to flap out their disapproval.  No amount of A1 was going to save this one.  

After weeks of no blogging, and this is what you get?  Sorry….if you were looking for something inspirational today, check out a totally unrelated video “The Last Lecture“. It is over an hour, so you can check out the Wall Street Journal 5 minute overview.

-GrillDude