While Tom takes advantage of the nice weather to clean his bike and re-spray the exhaust, I thought I'd take advantage of the laptop being free and update the old blog! It's certainly been a while... Hi!
Since the last time I came on here I've been to look at a few (a lot) of wedding dresses with Tom's sister Jess and other bridesmaid Becky, and have been on the hen party for Jemma and Steve's wedding in a couple of weeks. I've also started to get a cough and am losing my voice bit which is definitely nicht gut for the wedding singing plan...I'm taking effervescent vitamin C tablets again to try and fix things before this weekend as I'm going back to Droitwich to do a girly dress rehearsal for our hair and make-up, but also hopefully to show Jem some of the songs we've been working on.
Hen party was loads of fun though, and was surprisingly beneficial as it gave me much needed bowling practice for a night bowling with work colleagues (including some very senior people from Europe) last night - whilst I sucked at bowling on the weekend I didn't do too badly at all last night and managed to hold my own on the men's team - I even got a strike or two! Yippee!
Anyway, back to the
Cooking Challenge. I've managed to tick off a few other recipes but I have to honest I don't think I didn't a very good job on some of them so I'll be trying them again at some point to really try and get them right!
At the time of my last post (ten days ago I think) I started prepping everything for Ravinder Bhogal's Goan Sausage Burgers with Masala Chips and Chilli Pineapple Salsa, but as I'd left it too late I decided to just put it on hold and carry on the following night. Unfortunately the burger mixture got pretty soggy over night in the fridge so it didn't hold together very well when I did cook them following evening. The masala chips were really yummy though, although a bit sickly towards the end. I'm going to try to remember every thing I did to actually write this one up this time. This recipe had quite a few components so bear with the long post (also explains why I tried to make it over two nights!)
Ingredients (serves 6)
As usual I made this in smaller proportions for just the two of us and I can't quite recall what those were now, but I'll try my best to remember what I used to compare with the original recipe.
Goan Sausage Burgers
3 fat garlic cloves, roughly chopped (I used 1 really fat one)
1 thumb fresh root ginger, peeled and roughly chopped (I cheated and used a couple of tsp pre-chopped ginger which probably contributed to the mince getting too wet)
500g lean pork mince (I used roughly 350 - 400g)
1 small red onion (I used 1/2 white onion) finely chopped
1 red chilli (deseeded), finely sliced (I used 1/2 a chilli)
1 tsp each cumin and coriander seeds, both toasted in a dry pan and crushed (as I've mentioned before I dislike cumin and coriander so don't have seeds, so instead I just used a tsp each of the ground spices)
1 tsp mild Madras curry powder (I used 3/4 tsp)
zest and juice of 1 lemon (the lemons I had were a bit soft so didn't zest very well, so I decided to just add all the lemon juice which proportionally would have been too much for just the two of us, so again probably didn't help the mince mixture)
6 tbsp chopped fresh coriander (I think I probably just 1/3 of a bunch)
1 egg, beaten
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
a little vegetable oil for shallow frying
As I could tell the burger mix was getting a little wet even from the start I added some crushed up Jacob's Crackers (as in Jamie Oliver's burger recipe) to try to get it to bind a bit better.
For the pineapple salsa
1 small pineapple (I cheated and used 1/2 tin of pineapple rings)
3 tbsp chopped fresh mint (I just used a couple of shakes of dried mint)
1 red chilli (deseeded), finely chopped (I used half a chilli)
3 tbsp copped fresh coriander (I don't think I bothered this time!)
Juice of 1/2 lime (I used bottled lime juice, approx. 1.5 tbsp)
1 tsb mango powder (I left this out as there's nowhere near me that sells it!)
For the masala chips
6 Desiree Potatoes, peeled and cut into thick wedges (I used about 5 large new potatoes)
100g jaggery or palm sugar (I used muscovado sugar sugar instead)
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
Groundnut oil for deep-frying (it uses a lot!)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2.5cm knob fresh root ginger, peeled and finely grated (I just used a couple of tsp of the pre-chopped stuff again)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp chilli flakes
Phew! That's a lot of ingredents. Do you see why I didn't have the energy to attempt this in one night now?
Here's the method now:
Method
1. Start with the burgers. Put the garlic and ginger into a food processor and blitz to a fine paste. Mix the paste in a large mixing bowl with the pork mince, onion, chilli, ground cumin and coriander, curry powder, lemon zest and juice, and chopped coriander. Combine well and then add the beaten egg to bind. At this point I whizzed up 3 or 4 Jacob's Crackers into crumbs in my mini-chopper and added them to the mix to try to get it to stick together better.
2. Let the mixture rest for about 30 minutes to allow the mince to absorb all the flavours. Don't add the salt or pepper until you're about to fry as apparently this draws the moisture out of the onions and makes it go soggy. As my mixture was quite wet already I didn't bother salting mine at all in the end, and it still had some really good flavours.
3. While that's resting, make your salsa. Peel and finely chop the pineapple, or in my case, pineapple rings. Combine with the mint, chilli and coriander if using. Add the lime juice, season, mix well and if sprinkle over the mango powder if you are using it.
4. Now it's time to make the wedges. These really were yummy so I might make them to go with other meals or as a snack, but not too often mind - they were deep fried after all!
Run the potatoes under water to remove some of the starch and stop them sticking together, then wrap them in a tea towel or use kitchen roll to dry them off - this is important when deep frying as if they're too damp the oil will spit like crazy and you could get some nasty burns. I once had hot oil spit in my face as a child, and trust me, it is utterly horrible, so really make sure you dry off those potatoes as best as you can!
5. You won't be parboiling the potatoes, as they're meant to be firm when you cook them in the sticky chilli sauce, but you can pop them in an oven to keep warm while you cook the burgers like I did.
6. Soak the muscovado sugar in the white wine vinegar and keep mixing until it's pretty much all dissolved.
7. Add enough groundnut oil to a deep-ft fryer or a wok, so that your food will float in it and not touch the bottom. Heat until a dice sized cube of bread goes brown in 1 minute and then you can start deep frying the wedges, in small batches in best, until they are golden brown and cooked through. Drain the wedges on kitchen paper. I then popped mine in the oven at about 100c just to keep warm while I cooked the burgers as I knew it might not be that simple...
8. Heat a little vegetable oil in a frying pan (I think I probably used too much) and shape your sausage burgers into patties, by taking handfuls of the mixture, shaping into a ball and the flattening it slightly into a burger shape. I could have used the burger making kit and it might have bound together a bit better but then the patties would have been a lot thinner, and I wanted to at least try it by hand.
9. Fry for 4 - 5 minutes on each side over a medium heat to make sure they're cooked through but not overcooked. Once they're done, keep them warm while you finish the masala wedges (you can just swap them in the oven).
10. In a separate pan or wok, eat the vegetable oil and fry the garlic and ginger with the cinnamon until golden and fragrant. Mine might have turned out differently if I'd used fresh root ginger, but to be honest it still tasted great and the consistency was fine so I didn't really notice much of a difference this time. Pour in the jaggery (or muscovado) and vinegar and heat over a medium temperature. Let it bubble until almost most of the vinegar has evaporated, sprinkle in the chilli flakes, mix once, and quickly throw in the wedges and move them around to coat in the sticky sauce.
11. Serve at once with the burgers and the pineapple salsa.
I'm afraid I made the mistake of serving these on dark plate and when pretty much everything you're cooking turns out brownish, the photos come out pretty awful, but when I make this again I'll try to take a better picture!
I liked my potatoes a bit softer to Ravinder's recipe so mine definitely looked darker than the ones in her book (although the different sugar could have made a difference as well), but I still think they were really nice.
I wasn't mad about the salsa initially but then the masala wedges were pretty sweet so it was nice to have something refreshing to tone that down a bit. Although the sausages didn't stick together all that well, they did still taste really good, so I will try this again, but I'll try to get it right this time!!
In addition to that I've also made hummus, falafel, and vegetable bhajis, so that's another 4 in total crossed off the list, but I'll right those up separately, if I get the chance.
That brings the challenge stats to:
19 recipes done, 53 left, and 39 and a half weeks to do it!
That's all for now! All this writing about food has made me hungry!!
Laters,
xx
