TulaneLSU's filet mignon burger with Esplanade lump sauce

Dear Friends,

People say that our times are extreme times. Politically, we are told the middle road is gone. The far right and left have hijacked cordial discussions. Religiously, moderate and conservative groups have either been removed or nudged out the door of an increasingly liberal mainline Protestant church in America. Economically, we see the oligarchs increase their stores to unfathomable numbers while the average American continues to struggle to pay for simple things.

People, being that we are all damned sinners floating on little boats in a sea of grace, to which we are often blind, find reasons to hate. We find trivial reasons to ram our ships into other ships. As the pandemic has closed our world, we have found reasons to drive our ships into our countryman’s ships. I guess foreign ships are too far away now. We draw extreme conclusions and we paint ourselves as the righteous and those with whom we disagree we demonize.

During services this morning, I sang, “Guide me, O thou great Jehovah. Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more.” It came to me that we even have extremes on The Food Board. On one side are the people who think we should only eat gourmet food, and this has blemished the board’s reputation to outsiders, who think we are snobs. On the other side are the people who eat cheap and fast food for most of their meals. We need not gravitate to one corner, for we are all people with the same fundamental needs and desires.

To bring the two Food Board extremes together, I decided to take a little piece of each world and blend them into a harmonious menu item befitting a cashier at Popeyes as much as the former CFO at Whitney. The result is TulaneLSU’s filet mignon burger with Esplanade lump sauce.

Ingredients and tools:
1) TulaneLSU's Esplanade sauce
2) Two filet mignons, approximately 1.5 to 2 pounds in total weight
3) A meat grinder
4) A grill or stove
5) A spoon
6) A microwave (optional)



We start with two filet mignons. I look for the leanest available, always avoiding prime steaks, which are overly fatty. Somewhere along the road of life, it became accepted that good burgers and steaks have a lot of fat. Many of this mindset also think that chicken wings are a good source of food, even though they are 98% fat and bone. No, a good piece of meat is muscle, and muscle is not fat. While restaurant margins are increased by giving you fatty ground beef, for your health and for the true flavor of beef, I strongly urge you to use the leanest beef you can find. These steaks were over 90% beef and the final product reflected this high quality.

Some people season and bring to room temperature their beef. I do not. I went straight from fridge to grinder. I put not a single crystal of salt on it. Using my hands, I shaped them into imperfect rounds. The best burgers have imperfections throughout its shape. As the meat is still chilled, it holds its shape fairly well during the remainder of handling.



I did not want to feel the sun’s warmth this morning, so I decided to cook inside. I had the gas oven at 5/10 power and used a cast iron. I did not use any oils or butter to cook the burgers. There was just enough in the meat itself to make additional fat superfluous. Total cooking time was approximately 15 minutes.



While the burgers cooked, I retrieved from the refrigerator TulaneLSU’s Esplanade sauce. This lump crab based sauce started as a disaster yesterday, before it was rescued using Ms. Mae’s sage wisdom to add a bechamel sauce to it. As it has a significant amount of cheddar cheese in it, I guessed that it would suit a burger perfectly.



Once the burgers were medium-well, I put them on a bun. The first scoop of TulaneLSU’s Esplanade sauce went on cold. My thinking was the coolness would stop the burgers’ cooking, and the heat from being couched between two piping hot burgers would heat the sauce sufficiently. My assumption was correct.



I then heated in the microwave two scoops of the sauce. Once melted and steaming, I drizzled it on the upperdeck patty. It dripped down the edges, reminding me of a hot chocolate sundae. Superb appearance!



I weighed the burger. Using the tare function, final weight for this burger was 2 pounds 5 ounces. It was far too big to handle as a single burger, so I cut it in half. I also wanted you, my friends, to see the burger’s innards. Please note the sauce's constitution of rich cheese and lump crab meat.



Finally, I was ready to devour this colossal work of the middle ground, what we call in this city, the neutral ground. The flavors, though, were anything but neutral. Filet mignon, the finest cheese in America, lump crabmeat, and a perfect bechamel made me forget about my delicious meal at 2 Amigos last night. It blends the superb Den Gyldene Freden with the basics of a takeout Ben's Burgers. This burger, made in homage to the American, may surpass the Whole Foods smoked burger. May each of us find peace in the middle and make something new and beautiful today.



Faith, Hope, and Love,
TulaneLSU