Category: Savoury

I can smell summer BBQs: here’s easy, peasy, juicy Beef Burgers

I do love how summer smells.

What does summer smell like in your part of the world?

These are my current summer notes from my part of the world:

Freshly cut grass,

Pimms and lemonade,

Honeydew melons,

Lancome Midnight Rose,

salty sweat and soltan sunscreen (let’s keep it real!)

and

The charcoal smoke of barbeques!

bbqjuicy beef burger

I like spotting faces in places, can you spot the faces?

This beef burger recipe originated from Meagan (my Canadian friend from Oreo Cheesecake fame!). Meagan said that she didn’t know how to cook, but produced great cheesecake and these juicy homemade beef burgers. Maybe they have a much higher standard of home-cooking in Canada compared to the UK?!

She never told me the recipe when she lived in the UK. Was it because she was stunned that none of her UK friends had ever thought to make their own burgers and was worried that our brains would get fried by the complexity of it?

I’m joking. I think it was just me, at that point, who couldn’t getthat home-made burgers could be so easy to make. When I visited Meagan and Darren a few years ago, in Canada, I watched Meagan make them in less than 10 minutes: that’s how she convinced me of the utter ease of this recipe. Oh winter BBQs! That’s another great thing about Canadians. It was the beginning of March, there had been lots of snowfall, temperatures had plummeted to -25C during the day, and Meagan and Darren decided to put on the BBQ. A gas one that sits out on their porch, naturally. Why not?

But back to the subject. These home-made beef burgers are really easy and quick to make, cheaper and much tastier than any you’ll buy in a shop. I think that there are three reasons why these burgers are so simple to make:

  1. They use ingredients that most of us have in our cupboards.
  2. I use porridge oats which eliminates the step of making bread crumbs or crushing cream crackers.
  3. I use spring onions instead of onions, because no matter how finely I chop white or red onions, the onions always cause my burgers to fall apart in the cooking process. Spring onions provide the flavour and the burger holds together.

Please feel special because I have especially measured out the ingredients for you in order to give you this recipe. When I make these burgers I normally do a few squirts of tomato ketchup, mustard, a handful or so of oats, a bit of salt and pepper, as many chopped herbs as I fancy etc. So, if you’d like to, you can use my ingredients as a guide, and flavour it as your tastebuds lead you. On the other hand, I do get irritated with recipes that say things like, a bunch of dill or coriander etc., it’s just not helpful when you’re starting out. Oh I remember, back in the day, when I first came across Jamie Oliver’s Naked Chef recipes. His personality and style of cooking appealed to me. However, when he wrote things like ‘a glug of olive oil’ it was utterly meaningless and put me off making his recipes. Please! I don’t know what you mean by a glug or a bunch!

This recipe makes 8 medium sized burgers (approx 75g each). I pretty much double the recipe if I want to make more and modify the seasoning (by that I mean everything apart from the beef, spring onions and egg) depending on how it tastes. You can eat raw beef so it’s possible to taste as you go, only if you want to! I don’t mind it.

burger ingredients

Ingredients for Easy, Peasy, Juicy Beef Burgers

  • 1lb/454g minced beef aka ground beef in the US
  • (Highly recommended, but optional) 2 spring onions, finely chopped – I use all of the spring onion including the green bits on the top. I know that some people only use the white bits.
  • 50g porridge oats, or rolled oats
  • 1 egg
  • 1 clove of garlic, crushed
  • 3 tbsp tomato ketchup
  • 1½ tbsp barbeque sauce (woodsmoke flavour preferably)
  • 1½ tbsp french mustard
  • a shake of worcester sauce – difficult to measure that one, sorry.
  • ½ tsp salt (add more if needed)
  • ½ tsp ground pepper (add more if needed)
  • Optional herb flavourings. Add these according to how you want them to taste, but here’s a guideline: 10 stalks of parsley with leaves – finely chopped, including the stalks and 6 stalks of dill, finely chopped.

Method

1. Get a plate/tupperware box to place the burgers that you’re about to make before cooking them.

pre-mushing the burger

2. Put all the ingredients into a large bowl and mush [mix thoroughly] them together with your hands.

hand sized burgerssarah

3. Wet your hands so that the mixture doesn’t stick to your hands. Pick up a handful of the beef mixture. I weighed this out specially for you guys, and I think that anything between 70-80g is a good size. Gently roll it into a ball, then press it down firmly into the thickness that you want it, so that it forms flat-ish, round-ish disc shape. If you’d like to freeze them at this stage, spread them out on a baking sheet in one layer and place the sheet flat in the freezer. Once the burgers have frozen, you can store them into a bigger freezer bag. Take them out the day or morning that you want to eat them and let them defrost completely before cooking.

4. Barbeque them or grill them – the choice is yours, or if you live in the UK, depends on the weather. Serve as you like. My current favourite is to eat them with fresh bread with some guacamole, freshly cut tomatoes, and salad.

I’ve since taught this recipe a couple of times. Always with a bellyful of laughs and burgers.

yummy beef burgers

Simon Hopkinson’s Cheese and Onion Pie

cheese and onion pie

Last week, I made Simon Hopkinson’s Cheese and Onion pie in celebration of national pie week. I can’t recommend it highly enough. This pie is really tasty and simple to make, and even easier if you use ready-made shortcrust pastry from the shop.

Last summer, when I watched Simon Hopkinson make this on the Good Chef, I thought that he made it seem so irresistably tasty and simple. I don’t think that I’d made a savoury shortcrust pastry pie before this one (correct me if your memory is better than mine). If you want to simplify it with shop-bought shortcrust pastry and don’t count seasoning, then I count 3 cheap and easy to obtain ingredients that go into this pie: cheese, onions, pastry.

Okay, so I realise that the phrase ‘shop-bought shortcrust pastry’ keeps coming up. Reserve your judgement please. I’m making a stand for all of us who struggle to make shortcrust pastry from scratch without it falling apart. I hadn’t realised that there was so much disdain out there for those of us who buy blocks of ready made shortcrust pastry. But when I put them on the conveyor belt at Tesco’s, the cashier and the lady in front of me in the queue immediately tut-tutted me for not making it myself. “It’s so simple, you know to make it at home. You just put it in the food processor and it’s done.” No, believe me! It’s not that simple. I tried your method and Simon’s method and it ended up falling apart like a patchwork quilt. See what a disaster it was the only time I tried making the pastry from scratch.

blissfully ignorant short crustsad shortcrust pastryjust fell apart short crust

1. Blissful ignorance of the disaster to come; 2. Look – the pastry even looks sad!; 3. and it all falls apart.

Note to self: practise making pastry.

Since the summer, I’ve already made this pie four times and I’m no cheese-lover. So I’m pretty much saying that, I love this pie. Admittedly, having watched Simon Hopkinson’s video again, my onions look browner and my pastry more soggy. Even so. I’m choosing to imagine that this pie will get scrummier and scrummier the more I practice making it.

So here’s the yummy Simon Hopkinson’s Cheese and Onion Pie. It does take a while… so choose a moment when you don’t mind waiting at least 2 hours from start to finish.

First step in this pie making is sorting out the pastry side of things. I’ll give you the ingredients for the pastry a la Simon Hopkinson, which means that I’ve got a note of it to attempt it at another time. If you’ve decided on the ready-made stuff then don’t forget to preheat the oven at this stage and grease your pie dish. (read below)

Ingredients for the pastry

  • 60g/2oz cold butter, diced into small pieces
  • 60g/20z lard, diced into small pieces
  • 200g/7oz self-raising flour
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • 2-3 tbsp of very, very, very cold water

Alternatively… a 350g block of ready-made shortcrust pastry. Last time, I bought the ready rolled stuff because it was on offer. Tee hee….

Method for the pastry

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4 and grease a pie dish 20cm wide. I have used both a pryex pie dish and a loose-bottomed deep flan dish.

cheese and onion pie 3cheese and onion pie 2

2. Place the butter, lard, flour and salt in a food processor and mix until it looks like coarse breadcrumbs. Alternatively place the ingredients in a large bowl and with your fingertips, gently rub the fat into the flour so that it looks like coarse breadcrumbs. You don’t want to be making them too fine because that means that the fat gets too warm.

3. Add 2tbsp of water to bind the mixture. If it looks a bit dry then add in one more tbsp of water.

4. Cut off a third of it and lay it to one side. Roll out the remainder 2/3 of the pastry so that it is 5mm thick and lay it on the pie dish, pressing it against the sides. Remember to prick the bottom of it. Roll out the remaining third of pastry into a circle so that it will cover the pie. Leave it to one side and turn your focus to the pie filling.

frying onions

lancashire cheese coarsely grated

Ingredients for the Pie Filling

  • 25g/1oz butter
  • 3 white onions, sliced
  • 250g Lancashire Cheese, grated
  • approx 150ml cold water
  • Salt & Pepper to season
  • milk for sealing and glazing

Method for the Pie Filling

1. Roughly slice the onions, melt butter in the frying pan on a medium heat and add the onions to the pan. Fry the onions on a medium-low heat. Season with lots of pepper and some salt as you do this. Add 150ml water to the pan so that the onions stay moist. Maybe that’s where I go wrong and allow the onions to brown before adding the water. Next time! Once the onions have softened and become translucent, take the pan off the heat and allow the onions to cool down slightly.

2. In the waiting time, grate the cheese.

3. Time to layer up! Add half of the onions and spread them out in the pie. Then add a layer of cheese. Follow with a second layer of onions and another layer of cheese.

cheese and onion pie 4

I made the cuts where I had accidentally made holes in the pastry

4. I sometimes forget this step, but try and remember to brush the rolled out circle of pastry with milk, and lay it milk side down onto the pie to cover the cheese and onion mixture. Gently press the pastry cover on the top and press it against the sides to let the air out and also to seal the pie.

5. Cut off the pastry that’s hanging over with a sharp knife. At this point, I decided to copy Simon and make a pretty pattern on the top of my pastry. It’s not very important to do. What is more important is to make three 1 inch incisions in the pastry so that the air can come out while it’s cooking. Then glaze the top with milk.

6. Bake it in the oven for 40-50 minutes. Take it out and let it cool down for at least 20 minutes before cutting into it and taking a bite.

The verdict? MMMmmmmm… Heavenly.

cheese and onion pie 1

Roasted Beetroot and Goats Cheese Salad


roasted beetroot and goats cheese salad

Do you remember how I said that I don’t care much for the taste of beetroot. Well… I take it back somewhat with this beetroot and goats cheese salad. It turns out that I can’t resist anything with a goats cheese and balsamic syrup combination, even when beetroot is added to the mix. I’d make the salad again but tweak it slightly next time.

As I liked it the taste of it so much, I thought I’d make a feature out of this salad: I found it tucked away in the corner of the BBC good food recipe for the beetroot risotto that I made, labelled as another dish that I could TRY out. So I nicked a few beetroot quarters and rustled up this salad as a lunchtime warm up for my piece de resistance – the fuschia risotto. I won’t say it here, but you can imagine what all this beetroot eating did to my insides!

I’ve added some notes to myself in italics. You could try them out as well, if you fancy, or not. Roasted Beetroot and Goats Cheese Salad, adapted from BBC Good Food – serves 2.

Ingredients

  • 250g raw beetroot – about 3 medium sized beetroots.
  • 2 plates of salad leaves. I had rocket, lambs lettuce and some other lettuce leave (i’ve looked it up – it’s oak leaf lettuce).
  • 100g goats cheese
  • Balsamic Syrup/Glaze

Dressing:

  • 2 parts Extra Virgin Olive Oil to
  • 1 part Balsamic Vinegar
  • Salt and Pepper

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F Gas Mark 4 and line a baking tin with foil.

2. Wash, peel, cut and quarter the beetroot*. Coat them with olive oil and season with salt and pepper and roast for 45 mins. Add some extra flavours – could try a herb like rosemary or thyme; honey; balsamic vinegar

*I’ve read that you can peel the skin off a beetroot quite easily once it’s been roasted but I’ve yet to try that method.

prepare to roast beetrootroasted beetroot

3. Wash and dry some fresh salad leaves. Make a dressing from 2 parts olive oil to 1 part balsamic vinegar, seasoned with salt and pepper but don’t add it just yet. I’d also be keen to try some pumpkin or walnut oil on this salad, just to see what it tastes like with it.

4. When 40 minutes of beetroot roasting time has passed, place a hefty slice of goats cheese on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof or baking paper (makes getting the goats cheese off much easier) and pop it into the oven for 7 mins.

goats cheese

beetroot and goats cheese salad

5. Take the beetroot and goats cheese out the oven. Arrange the roasted beetroot on top (I chose the ones that looked a bit more crisp and caramelised) of the salad leaves. Drizzle the dressing on top. Then, slide the bubbling goats cheese on top. Scatter some nuts on top – maybe some walnuts or pine nuts.

6. Scoosh some lovely balsamic syrup around the salad and… Ta Da! Absolutely delicious.

My tip to you – Don’t miss out the balsamic syrup: it completes the dish by bringing all the flavours together.

finished beetroot and goats cheese salad

A very pink (in fact, it’s fuschia) beetroot risotto!

Very pink risotto

The photo Emily took on Sunday of our colourful meal.

My sister gave me 1kg of homegrown beetroot at the end of July and I have almost used them all up. Beetroot ticks the box of ‘unfamiliar ingredient’ that normally puts me off making a recipe. I’ve experimented with sweet and savoury recipes provided by BBC good food and delicious magazine and it’s taken away some of my unease about cooking with beetroot. My learning points:

  1. Always wear an apron. Beetroot stains are devilish to get out!
  2. Kitchen gloves are a godsend when you need to grate beetroot. It prevents a) bits of fingernail or thumb grated in and b) very pink stained hands.

Sadly, however, my main discovery has been… I really don’t like the taste of beetroot. It makes me purse my lips in a funny way as I eat it because I’m not keen on the flavour. Then, it sits rather uneasily in my stomach. So, there you go. I’ve finally admitted it. In fact, if I was the b-list celebrity being interviewed by James Martin on Saturday Morning Kitchen, I would say that my food hate is beetroot. It has even trumped my previous food hate of congealed cheese.

Which is a bit sad really, because I’d like to like this vegetable. It is so very interesting and colourful. I love how it adds a bright fuschia colour to the dish. Besides, everyone seems to like eating beetroot. In fact, I’ve only ever come across one other person who doesn’t like the taste of it.

You’ll notice I’ve written italicised notes to myself next to parts in the method, with my ideas of how I could adapt this recipe so that it will suit my palate. The thing is, this has had lots of rave reviews on the BBC good food website. I bet they all liked beetroot to start off with. I mean, which silly person, who doesn’t really like beetroot, chooses to make a dish that’s all about beetroot?

Anyway, that is just me and my tastebuds. My friends, Emily and JCT came round to help finish off the beetroot risotto the next day. They liked the flavour and especially the colour. And you know what? I’d love to serve it as a prima plata at a dinner party, because it would serve as such a great conversation starter! So for all of your beetroot lovers, let me tell you about how I made beetroot risotto, adapted from BBC Good Food.

List of Ingredients

  • 500g raw beetroot, washed peeled and cut into quarters. 500g is about 5 or 6 small-medium sized beetroots.
  • 25g butter
  • 1 onion
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 250g risotto rice
  • a large glass of white wine
  • 750ml hot vegetable stock (or chicken stock, you’re not vegetarian)
  • 2 handfuls of parmesan (about 75g).
  • To serve: natural yoghurt or creme fraiche and sprigs of dill, or a slice of goats cheese, balsamic syrup and a scattering of fresh thyme leaves.

Method

1. Prepare your beetroot to roast in the oven. Preheat the oven to 180C. Line a large baking pan with foil. I guess this prevents the beetroot staining the tin. Clean, peel (wear the kitchen gloves!) and quarter the beetroot. Coat with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Put them in the oven to bake for 45 mins.* I’d like to bring out more of the beetroot’s sweetness. So, next time, I think I’ll add balsamic vinegar or honey and maybe some sprigs of thyme.

*I roasted these at lunchtime, so that I could use some beetroot for a lunchtime roasted beetroot and goats cheese salad. The recipe recommended it as a ‘you could also do…’, so I did. But, if you wanted to save on time, you could choose to start on the risotto.

2. Melt the butter in an large oven proof pan that has a lid (if it doesn’t have a lid, then use cover with tin foil). I decided to test out the oven-proofness of my largest sized Judge saucepan for this recipe. (It passed the test.)

3. Chop the onions and garlic and fry them at a moderate heat until soft. Add the rice and give it a good stir so that every bit of rice is coated.

4. Now, my favourite bit – add that glass of wine. Mmmm… Stir the rice some more. Once most of the wine has disappered in the pan, add ALL of that hot stock. Bring to boil for 5 mins, stir, cover with a lid and then pop it into the oven for about 15 mins. Or until the rice is cooked, but slightly al dente.

add all the stock to the pantrying to puree the beetrootunsuccessful puree

5. When the beetroot is done, take a quarter of them and puree them. I put them in a blender and they failed to puree. Hmmm…. Cut the remainder of the roasted beetroot into small chunks. Okay, so a few options here. Next time, cut the remaining beetroot into very small chunks, say the size of a 1cm cube. Better still, if I can figure it out, puree the whole lot!

6. Grate the parmesan.

7. Take the risotto out of the oven, once the rice is ready. There should still be a bit of liquid in there. Stir in a handful of the parmesan and the beetroot puree and chunks. Watch the risotto gradually transform into a vibrant shade of PINK, as you stir and the beetroot colour bleeds into the rice. I loved watching this bit.

Fuschia Beetroot Risotto

8. Serve immediately with more parmesan cheese and a contrasting white colour. The first time, I had a dollop of yoghurt, as I didn’t have any creme fraiche, and a scattering of dill. Sadly, I only had dried dill but I could taste the life that herb brought to the dish. I’d definitely use the fresh stuff next time though. I love fresh dill. The second day, I had a hunk of goats cheese and a squirt of balsamic syrup. Definitely use fresh dill another time but if I’ve used thyme in the roasting process, then how about a few fresh thyme leaves instead of the dill?

beetroot risotto and yoghurt

Sicilian Caponata (Sicilian Aubergine Relish)

Sicilian_Caponata

I fell in love with antipasti when I holidayed in the north-western tip of Sicily last September. In the past, I’d completely avoided antipasti: the magazine diet pages advise against eating antipasti for their hidden calories. I’m not entirely sure what changed my mind, but I had definitely ditched that notion of avoiding antipasti by the time I went on holiday. And I’m glad I did, because it certainly made for a glorious gastronomical adventure.

menu del diaantipasti

breadsicilian restaurant

On our final night we stopped by the beautiful seaside town of Castellammare del Golfo, which was dressing itself up for a feria. Sarah and I both love good food so we wanted to finish our holiday with a delicious italian meal. We chanced upon this newly-opened restaurant and entered on the recommendation of an italian man (who was also a chef!) we bumped into at the corner of the street. He spoke english, having worked in England for a few years, and he was holidaying with his family in the area. I do love those serendipitous moments. I think of them as God showing me favour. Others might call them fortune or chance. I absolutely recommend this restaurant to you, but I’m not sure where it is. Maybe the photo will help you find it. We were served a delicious menu del dia. However, truth be told, I was full after the antipasti. I was ever so apologetic to the chef for leaving food on my subsequent platas.

Before we left the beautiful island, with the aquamarine shoreline, I began to dream up an time when we could eat sunny, sicilian food in the backdrop of a wet, grumpy, english winter. The occasion presented itself when I arranged a sicilian evening with my friends Helen and John, who had been to Sicily earlier in the year. Helen and I decided that we’d only serve antipasti, bread and dessert. We didn’t plan a main course. The benefit of hindsight from our holidays.

Helen made tasty parma ham rolls stuffed with cream cheese and mango and a flavourful french bean, sundried tomato and feta cheese salad. My contribution to the evening: homemade caponata and sicilian bread. (I’ll write about my tentative endeavours into bread making another day.)

sicilian evening

Caponata isn’t much to look at; it tastes spectacular. How do I describe the flavour? Sweet, tangy, a bit crunchy, moreish. Perhaps, one would bluntly call it an aubergine chutney, but that doesn’t sound very appealing to me. The juices from the vegetables makes a beautiful sauce and the aubergines soak it up. Yum. It was one of the antipasti that was constantly served to us when I was out there.

When I found this Antonio Carluccio recipe(which is in his Italia cookbook), one of the things that almost put me off making this dishis the looooong list of ingredients. But then I remembered my resolution to push my culinary self. Besides, I realised that I had most of the ingredients and I only needed to buy capers and olives… and celery and aubergines and tomatoes.. It really does taste pretty special and it is a very simple dish to make. Admittedly the list of ingredients is on the long side. There’s just quite a bit of prepping and chopping at the start.

The recipe recommended you want the pale violet aubergine that is native to Italy. I found it tricky to source in Coventry so I satisfied myself with the deep violet variety.

Oh, and something else to note. Use a really large, deep frying pan, or a large wok. I started out with a frying pan, then swapped it for a stock pan because of the quantity of the ingredients.

Ingredients

  • 600g aubergines (about 3 medium sized aubergines), cut into 1 inch cubes
  • Salt
  • 6-8 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, or just olive oil
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 2 celery hearts, cut into little chunks
  • 500g ripe tomatoes, chopped
  • 100g pitted green olives
  • 60g salted capers, rinsed
  • 100g slivered almonds
  • 2 ripe but firm pears, cored, peeled and sliced
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp ground cloves
  • 50g caster sugar
  • 50ml white wine vinegar

Method

1. In a large bowl, immerse the cubed aubergine in salted water for 1 hour. Then drain and press down firmly on the aubergines in order to squeeze as much water out. Transfer the aubergine onto a clean tea towel and pat the aubergine cubes dry. Prepare a plate with a few sheets of kitchen paper.

2. Heat most of the extra virgin olive oil in the frying pan, or stock pan and fry the aubergine cubes until it’s a golden colour, rather than a bit burnt like mine. Transfer the fried aubergine onto the plate with the kitchen paper, so that as much oil is absorbed. Leave to one side.

fried aubergine caponataadding everything else caponata

simmering caponataadding aubergine, sugar and vinegar

3. Add more oil, if necessary, and fry the onion until soft. Add in all the other ingredients, except the caster sugar and white wine vinegar (really important you leave these out for now). So, that’s the celery, tomatoes, olives, capers, almonds, pears, cinnamon and cloves. Simmer for about 20 minutes.

4. Add the aubergines to the pan, with the sugar and white wine vinegar. Season with salt, if required. Cook for another 10-15 minutes. Take it off the heat and let it cool down.

Caponata can be eaten warm, and believe me, I couldn’t resist a wee taste of it. But it is, oh so delicious, when served cold.

sicilian caponata

This made A LOT. I had loads leftover from the sicilian evening. I took it to a friend’s birthday party later that week, by which time the flavours had matured and we kept going back for some more. I gave some to a sicilian student, I stirred it through pasta to make packed lunches, and finally finished it off with a friend of mine with some bread and salad. It’s really handy to have a few jars of this in the fridge for a delicious lunch, or a contribution to a dinner.