I love my cast iron for grilling in an apartment, although yes, you do need your windows open.
As much as I love thick burgers, if you want a half pound burger, I find things cook better and more consistently if you just do two quarter pounders. Heck, I even have good results making sliders and stacking them.
For a great alternative in (West) African dishes to black pepper, try using grains of paradise. You can get them from TheSpiceHouse.com or World Spice Merchants.
They are peppery, but also have hints of cardamon. It would add a lot more complexity to the dish, if that was your wish.
I've got my 'liberated' brickskellar menus in which I've highlighted some of the brews I've had. It's been a couple years since I've been, but it was always a great trip when you could focus on a country or continent.
I don't know if it is still on the menu, but they had a decent burger made with some sausage that was tasty. I wouldn't go for the food, but it wasn't bad ,either.
On rainy days, if I went out to lunch at work, we'd go out for some Vietnamese pho.
I have had thai type mussels that were cooked in a white wine type sauce with lemongrass, chilis, and basil. Good eats.
Santa Monica Seafood is OK. Very over priced, all things considered, at least to me (grew up on the Chesapeake Bay), but they do have a great selection (just no blue crabs!). If you do have a specific seafood need out here, it seems that SMS or going down to San Pedro are your best bets. For most seafood, I've found that the 'specialty' versions of the grocery stores do OK.
FWIW, Costco seems to have the cheapest canned crab meat. I just made MD Crab Soup.
Butcher info would be nice to have, since I just moved to West LA myself.
I love my cast iron skillets and always cook my eat on them. Burgers, steaks, chicken - doesn't matter.
What I do to make burgers cook evenly - I like mine around 6 oz's. Shape the burger and then make a donut hole in the center. It will cook the burger much more evenly and the hole will close as it cooks. For some strange reason it doesn't make it well-rare-well, which one would think. It just makes it even, and is a perfect (for me) way of making thick burgers.
I always thought you couldn't make a good hamburger at home unless you did it outside on the grill (where it is hard to go wrong), until I got a cast iron skillet.
I mash the meat thin between wax paper and pressing down on a plastic cutting board. I splash on Worcester sauce, teryaki sauce (that's the salt) and pepper.
They are really good doing the White Manna method. You slap it in the skillet and cover with onions. Just before flipping, mash in the onions and flip. Add cheese to melt.
I like the What-A-Burger stacking method. Mustard on the buns. Lay out the top bun then put on the lettuce, then the tomatoes, then the pickles, then I like jalapenos. Take the burger off the skillet and lay the cheese side on top of the vegetable. Then the bottom bun. Flip over.
I inherited that plastic hamburger shaping device! I haven't used it yet because last time I made hamburgers I cheated and made Central Market pre shaped ones from their meat section! Anyway, I'll let you know how it works 20 something years later! I always thought that was SO cool!
@Robin
My cast iron isn't a grill pan but I can still acieve a properly-cooked burger. The trick is getting the heat right. I like getting the pan pretty hot, putting the burger on, and then turning down the head to medium/medium-high pretty quickly. This gets a bit tedious if you're doing more than two burgers, but for small batches, I find it produces the best results.
I have a Le Creuset cast iron grill pan and have never managed to use it without filling the apartment with smoke (or ending up with food that might as well not be grilled). I don't know how anyone does it.
Grains of paradise are also considered by herbalists to be an aphrodisiac. =)
Nick, I'm in Columbus OH - where is your wine store?
Cheese Please: Yeah, the chicken thighs threw me off at first too. But yes, the bone should be left in. And the skin should stay on. I should have clarified that.
Mike Sims: thanks for the idea. I haven't experimented with grains of paradise, but I'm definitely interested. Thanks!
DeaconVolker: The tomatoes are there! They just reduced considerably over the 30 minute simmer.
oops, never mind...I guess I expected to "see" more in the serving.
@MikeSims....thanks for the grains of paradise suggestion! I live near a Spice House in Chicago, the one on Wells Street. I've never heard of grains of paradise, but it sounds like something I should check out during my food gathering rounds on Saturday.
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