After a lovely train ride, a trip to the grocery store, and a couple of wrong turns, we finally made it to our cabin in the woods. Eric Berelovich found the perfect place outside of Accord, NY. The cabin had plenty of bedrooms, the latest IKEA  furniture, but weirdly no curtains on any of the windows. Even though it had a wrap around porch. Regardless, it was plenty of space for our group, especially the kitchen.

Since the grill was out of gas, we decided to make our Fourth of July burgers on the stove top. The kitchen actually was equipped with a grill top, which we used to grill the asparagus. Earlier in the evening, we had caramelized our onions and prepped different dips sauces and veggies to top the burgers. Prepping and chopping everything earlier in the evening really made the difference. As you can see above, we made the burgers diner style, which was so delicious. The trick to diner style is not to pre-form patties. We heated up the pan and greased it with butter. Once hot, the burgers went straight on. They were then seasoned as they were cooked with cheese added last.

We also made a lot of bacon. With the kitchen grill top, we could toast the buns. I was skeptical at first about not using the outdoor grill, but everything turned out perfect and was much easier.

Here is a portion of the condiments we could select. My contribution was chopping the jalapeños

My finished plate. Luckily I remembered to take a picture before I inhaled it. Grilled asparagus and a diner style burger with cheese, pickles, ketchup, caramelized onions, and spicy aioli sauce. It is always fun on a group weekend trip to take a  new kitchen for a whirl seeing other cooks’ processes. Thanks to our friend Eric Berelovich, we all had a great time exploring the Hudson Valley.