Ever watched cartoon characters eat a burger? You know that perfect bite when they chomp into it and you wish all food was cartoon food. I'm not saying these are cartoon burgers but they're pretty close! Different elements make up this awesome burger which I'll outline in this blog. However what makes a good burger a great burger is the quality of ingredients. You don't need to be all organic and "granola" about it, but be mindful of the ingredients you're putting together and seek out the best you can.

Starting with the bun. It should be soft, not sugary and has some integrity so it doesn't just fall apart when sandwiching a bit of meat.

Moving onto the bacon, if you're using it. It must be smoked bacon. Remember, not all bacon is smoked. Some are cured by other means. Those you should avoid. In Australia, you'll find what they call "streaky bacon". This is the ideal bacon cut for burgers. Take your time with cooking this. Don't add oil to the pan when you're frying this as enough fat will come out of the bacon. Use medium heat and let is crisp up good.

Last but not least the beef. In the past we'd always use store bought mince. Those days are over. We now buy rump steaks and hand mince them. This way, you know what meat is actually in your mince (not offal, bones and cardboard). Remember to include a good ratio of fat to meat (20/80 is ideal). I find rump is a great cut, well priced with good fat ratio. And I hear you asking, "how do you hand mince meat". You don't need a meat grinder. You simply cut the meat fine. I also suggest separating the meat with the fat and cut those up separately then mix it together afterwards. Be sure not to overwork the meat, as in handle it too much. I truly believe home, hand minced beef is the secret to a great burger.

Other ingredients to consider include slowly sauteed onions and mushrooms. Opt for cos lettuce if you can. It has more of a crunch and less water content. Pick a melty cheese. Jack, colby or cheddar are good options.

I'm not going to outline every single step in assembling a burger as everyone has their own "style". Below is a recipe to flavouring of the patty and a few tips we've learnt. Note, the quantities are rough and largely "free pour". So trial and error with your flavours. Add more if you like more flavour, add less if you want to keep it simple.

Patty mix Ingredients
~500g Hand mince beef
1 egg
1/4 to 1/3 cup breadcrumbs
~ 2 Tbpsn tomato sauce/ketchup
~ 2 Tbpsn worcestershire sauce
~ 2 tspn dried (or fresh) parsley, (sometimes I put oregano and minced garlic too).
~ 1 tspn salt
pepper to desired quantities


Patty method
Mix all the above mentioned ingredients together in a large bowl until just combined. Allow to rest and flavours mature. Cover and leave overnight in the fridge or set aside for a few hours.

Portion patties appropriate size to the buns. Roll in balls then flatten. Following my visit to the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul, I "juicy lucy" -'ed these patties. I put a little piece of cheese in the middle of the patty before frying it.

Fry in a well greased, pan on medium to medium high heat. Tip here is to only flip once. When you flip, you can melt a slice of cheese while the patty is frying on the other side. Another tip: lately we've been frying the bacon first, then cooking the patties in the bacon fat. This definitely adds extra flavour. You could also BBQ the patties for that nice char-grilled flavour.

Construct burger, eat and enjoy!

How good is polenta! So simple, easy and tasty! We have always kept a box of the stuff in the pantry. I don't know why, but we rarely used it. 

Occasionally for corn bread or in place of crumbs for schnitzel. Then I get my regular weekly email from taste.com.au suggesting 5 ways polenta. Mmm okay (in my hungry delusional state where everything would just amazing).

I adapted this recipe for the meatballs, and used this recipe as a guide to make the creamy polenta. Below my version of this tasty meal, that's sure to warm you on a cold autumn/winter's day.

Ingredients
Meatballs
400g mince (I used 100g pork mince, and 300g beef mince)
1 clove garlic, minced
100g bread crumbs
1 egg, lightly beaten
~1/4 cup fresh, flat leaf parsley (+ more to garnish), finely chopped 
a few sprigs of sage, finely chopped
2 Tblspn olive oil
1/4 large onion, finely chopped
1 tspn paprika 
1 tspn cayenne pepper
1 tspn whole grain mustard

Meatball sauce
~2 Tblspn olive oil to coat pan
3/4 large onion, roughly chopped
1 cup chicken stock
1 can whole tomatoes
2 Tblspn dried basil
~1/4 cup, fresh, flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
1 tspn honey (or sugar)
~1/2 to 1 tspn salt
pepper to taste

Creamy Polenta
1 cup instant polenta
3 cups chicken (or vegetable) stock
2 Tblspn cream
40g butter
1/3 to 1/2 cup parmesan, freshly grated 

Method
Marinate your meatballs
1. Combine all ingredients listed under meatballs (above) in a medium to large bowl. For a more thorough mixture, use your hands to mix. Set aside. At this time you can prep the ingredients of the meatball sauce (chopped your onions, celery and mushrooms, prepare your stock).

2. Using damp hands, roll mixture into balls (around 1 to 2 tablespoons size).

Meatball sauce
3. Over high heat, coat a large, heavy base fry pan with oil. Add about a third of the amount of onions, stir until translucent. Add meat balls. Be sure not to crowd the pan. Fry them in lots if you have to. Brown the meat balls off and remove from pan, set aside.

4. In the same pan, add a little bit more oil if necessary, and fry the rest of the onions. Stir in celery. Stir in mushrooms. Return the meatballs to the pan. Add stock. Bring to a simmer. Add canned tomatoes. Before you put them in the pan, squash them (either with a fork or your hands). Add herbs, honey (or sugar), salt and pepper to taste. If not already, bring to a simmer and reduce heat. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

Polenta
5. In a medium pot, bring stock to a boil over high heat, with a wire balloon whisk, gradually start stirring in the polenta in a small but steady stream. Whisk constantly until all the polenta is incorporated into the stock (whisking ensures the polenta is dispersed through the liquid as quickly as possible). Don't add the polenta too quickly or it will turn lumpy.

6. Reduce heat to low (cook the polenta over low heat otherwise it will cook too quickly and you will need to add extra water). Simmer, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon or whisk, for 10 minutes or until the mixture thickens and the polenta is soft. (To test whether the polenta is soft, spoon a little of the polenta mixture onto a small plate and set aside to cool slightly. Rub a little of the polenta mixture between 2 fingers to see if the grains have softened. If the grains are still firm, continue to cook, stirring constantly, over low heat until the polenta is soft.)

7. Remove from heat. Add the cream, parmesan and butter, and stir until well combined. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately with meatballs. Top with fresh parsley and freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Every South East Asian nation has their own version of stir fry noodles, and so does every Asian restaurant around the world, catering to the palates of their local patrons. 

With this dish, you have a lot of creative license. Throw together what you have or carefully select your favourite ingredients. Whatever you decide, there are a few simple directions to make this dish great. I’ve tried to highlight this in my instructions below. To summarise, it's a lot of different flavours – garlic, ginger, onions, herbs. And no matter how hard you try, you’ll always cook more than you think you need. But that’s okay, this is great as leftovers too (or mid-night snacks).

If you have your favourite version, I would love to hear about it, feel free to leave a comment.

This recipe serves 2 very hungry people or probably 3 to 4 average serves. Obviously you can increase the portions to cater for more people.

Ingredients
150g sirloin beef steak, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 to 2 tspn minced fresh ginger
1 medium onion, chopped
light soy sauce (I’m not sure of quantities, so just keep the bottle out. Basically use soy sauce of your salt.)
2 to 3 tblspn oyster sauce (I used vegetarian mushroom oyster sauce)
150g mushrooms, sliced
1 head of broccoli, cut into bite sized ‘tree-tops’ (as my mum likes to call them)
2 sticks of celery – thick slices
200g fried tofu, halved or quartered. (Apologies, this isn’t very descriptive, but you can see from the picture what I mean. But we love our fried tofu, obviously this is optional)
Vegetable or olive oil for frying
1 tspn flour corn starch mixed with 1/8 cup of water (cold or at room temperature)
200g fresh rice noodles (available at most Asian supermarkets)
bunch of chopped fresh coriander (cilantro)
Pepper and sesame oil to taste

Other ingredients you can include:
Chopped cabbage
Baby spinach
Chinese greens (bok choy, choy sum etc)
Carrots – thickly sliced julienne
Cauliflower
Green beans
Snow peas
... I can go on! Essentially lots of veges
Eggs
Chicken, pork, fish (instead of beef)

Method
Preparation
1. Marinate the meat – It doesn’t matter what little time you have, some marinating time is better than no marinating. This particular instance I did this 3 days before and left it in the fridge, but that’s a bit extreme. I’d just so happened to defrost the meat to make pho. So I decided to marinate it and leave it in the fridge until I needed it later in the week. So in a small bowl, combine the sliced beef, 1 tspn minced ginger, 2 cloves of garlic – minced, soy sauce (enough to just coat the meat) and pepper. Stir and set aside.

2. Prepare veges – Once you have the meat marinating, spend all the time you like chopping up your vegetables. The idea is to get them bite sized. Not too big you’ll struggle to put the piece in your mouth, but not too small it falls apart and the noodles can’t carry it. When you’re chopping it, keep them separated. Though they’re similar in size, they still take different lengths of time to cook.

3. Other prep – chop up your onions, more garlic, more ginger. Again keep them separate. Slice up the tofu. Put rice noodles in a colander and rinse under tap hot water to loosen up and wash away the residual oil from the packet.

Cooking
4. The essence of this bit is high heat and work quick. If you can’t handle it, drop the heat or move the pan away from the burner until you’re ready to move on. Heat a wok or fry pan on high (when you put your hand over it, it should feel like you right next to a heater – toasty!) then add oil, swirl to coat the pan. Add onions, stir around until slightly translucent, add ginger and veges. General rule, the harder the vegetable, the longer it takes to cook. So carrots, broccoli generally take longer than the leafy spinach and the soft mushrooms.In this case I just added the broccoli, stir around, then add celery, reduce the heat slightly, add mushrooms, then add a dash of water and cover for about 30 seconds. This cooks the greens. You can tell its good when it just turns from a dull colour to a shiny bright colour, as soon as that happens take it off the pan and set aside. This will still be a bit crunchy but we’ll bring it back later so don’t worry.

5. In the same pan, bring the pan’s temperature back to hot, add more oil to just coat the pan and add meat. Stir around to just cooked through. As the meat starts browning add starch/water mix. This will create a thick gravy. Especially with beef this won’t take long. Set aside (can be in the same vessel as the vegetables from step #4).

6. Again, in the same pan, bring the heat back to hot and add a bit more oil and the tofu with about 1/2 tspn of chopped ginger. The idea is to the bring the tofu to hot and slightly flavour with ginger. Again this shouldn’t take long. 1 minute or so. At the same time, the tofu will pick up the residual flavour of the meat left behind from the previous step. Set aside (can be in the same vessel as the vegetables and meat from step #4 & #5).

7. In medium to high heat, add noodles, any gravy from the vegetables from step #4 and meat in step #5. Then add a dash of soy sauce and oyster sauce to noodles and stir to combine. Reduce heat to medium. Add all the veges, meat and tofu back into the same pan and stir to combine evenly. This step is to bring it all together, reheat the vegetables, meat and tofu you set aside and make sure you have all the flavours right. This is a point to taste and adjust the seasoning where you see/taste fit. If too salty, add sugar. If not salty enough, add soy sauce.

8. Serve hot with a light coating of sesame oil and pepper.

The rain has really settled in Sydney this weekend, as winter rears its head around for 2012. As usual, my mood for noodle soup has resurfaced. I made this recipe up – I don't think it's too much straying away from the traditional phở recipe. Although simpler, I feel a bit guilty using pre-made stock. At least it's not from powder and the packet was soon expiring.  

What makes this fusion? I’ll let you read the recipe below, but there is miso paste, apple cider vinegar, Chinese cabbage, button mushrooms and vermicelli noodles.

Ingredients
1 litre of beef stock
1 cup of water
1.5 tblspn fish sauce
1 tblspn oyster sauce
2 star anise pieces
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 large onion – roughly chopped
2-4 cloves of garlic – minced
5 thickly slices of ginger
1 – 1.5 tblspn miso paste (I used a dashi flavoured one)
1/2 tspn crushed peppercorns
1 cup of celery leaves
1 tblpsn apple cider vinegar
2 medium button mushroom – quartered
250g sirloin beef steak – thinly sliced
5 or so outer leaves of a chinese cabbage head – finely chopped. Separate the leafy and stalky bits.
2 tblspn chopping coriander leaves (I used dried as I didn’t have any fresh)
200g dried vermicelli noodles

Method
1. In a large pot, add stock, water, fish sauce, oyster sauce, star anise, cinnamon sticks, onions, garlic, ginger, miso paste, peppercorns, celery leaves. On high heat, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes.

2. Add mushrooms and stalky cabbage bits and continue to simmer until mushrooms are cooked. Turn heat off (you can keep it simmering on low until you’re ready to serve).

3. In a large bowl put dried vermicelli noodles and pour boiling hot water to just cover. Allow to soften – about 5 or 10 minutes. Drain, set aside.

4. Just before serving, put beef slices into broth. The remaining heat will cook the meat.

5. To serve, put in bowls leafy cabbage then vermicelli noodles. Then add meat and hot broth and its contents. Serve with fresh sliced chilli (if you fancy it).

Its been a while since my last blog post. A combo of too much going on and lacking inspiration. Agreed, that’s no excuse. My apologies. So to make it up, I have a few posts to come in quick succession. Here is the first – beef strog. It's one of the winter staples in our household. With the weather getting cooler quickly in Sydney, this strog was a great idea and enjoyed very much.

As you know, I try not to use pre-made packet sauce mix. I don’t think canned mushroom soup falls into this category, and this can be made without it, but I think it definitely adds to the flavour and is much quicker to make. I didn’t hand make this gnocchi either. I figured it's just a base, and you can serve the stroganoff with whatever you like, pasta, rice, mash potato.

Ingredients
2 tblspn olive oil
500g beef – thin slice strips (I used chuck steak in this instance. You can use blade, rump, gravy – whatever you fancy. The cheaper cuts just means a longer simmer to get it to soften up. You can even use minced beef!)
1 tblspn paprika
1 large onion – finely chopped
250g fresh button mushrooms thickly sliced
2 bay leaves
2 tblspn chopped parsley
1 tspn of crushed peppercorns
1 tblspn Worcestershire sauce
1 canned mushroom soup
2 tblspn sour cream
salt to taste

Method
1. On high, heat a large pot and add half olive oil to coat the base. Reduce heat to medium high and add beef to brown only, no need to cook through (2 to 3 minutes). Set meat aside.

2. Return pot to heat, add remaining oil and chopping onions. Stir to sauté. Stir in paprika, bay leaves, parsley and peppercorns. Return meat. Add mushrooms and stir through. Add Worcestershire sauce.

3. Add canned mushroom. Stir and reduce heat to simmer for 15 to 30 minutes or until meat is tender. Stir occasionally. Start cooking gnocchi.

4. Just before serving, stir in sour cream. Taste and season with salt accordingly.

5. Serve with gnocchi (or whatever you want).

This is one of OG's favourite dishes that's been loved by all who have tried it. No "Old El Paso" packet stuff. This is great mex with simple ingredients. It can be served many ways, over rice, on corn chips, in a burrito - you name it! 

This is dairy free, gluten free and egg free (depending what else you eat with it). The quantities I've listed below are rough and obviously if you want more or less of something, then add or subtract accordingly. Cumin and coriander is a must but don't worry if you slip in too much, all is forgiven.

Ingredients

1 Tbspn olive oil (approx) 1 Medium onion - finely diced pinch or 2 of cayenne pepper (or to taste) 2 to 4 Tbspn ground cumin 2 to 4 Tbspn ground coriander 300g of mince beef (can be substitute with mince pork) 2 cloves garlic - roughly chopped 1 to 2 cans red kidney beans - drained 1 can diced tomatoes 1 tspn salt (to taste) * (optional) fresh chilli(s) - sliced

Method
1. On high heat, in a medium to large pan, add oil to coat base and a little extra. Add onions and brown slightly. Add half the cayenne pepper, half the cumin, half the coriander and stir. Add mince beef and stir to quickly and roughly seal. When there are still pink bits of meat, turn the heat down to medium to medium low. Stir in garlic (as the pan cools from adding the onions and meat so not to burn and go bitter). If you find it catching at the bottom of the pan, a little bit more olive oil.

2. At this time most of the beef has browned. Move the meat to one side of the pan and add kidney beans. While in the pan, mash about half the beans (either with a potato masher or a fork). You can pre-mash them before adding them to the pot if that's easier. Mix through the beans and meat. Mashing half the beans creates a creamy texture, while having some whole beans for taste, colour and presentation.

3. Stir in canned tomatoes. 

4. Add remaining cayenne pepper, cumin and coriander to taste. Add salt to taste. If you're adding fresh chilli(s), you'd do that now too. Mix through.

5. Turn heat down low and leave to simmer for about half an hour. Check and stir every 5 to 10 minutes to ensure the mixture isn't sticking to the pan. This allows the flavours to combine and absorb through.


Serve with rice/corn chips/ tortillas. Goes well with salsa, sour cream, shredded cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, avocado... all your typical mexican sides. Garnish with fresh coriander/cilantro (optional).