The Perfect Hamburger

The perfect burger. I’m not the first person to observe that it’s something you cannot find for love nor money in this country. Even in London, which offers more formed–meat-patty-in-bun eating opportunities than most British cities. Let’s rule out the big fast food chains for a start: the golden arches and the creepy mask-wearing King are obviously popular around the World, but for a real burger connoisseur they’re only ever a desperate last resort when there’s no other option or you’re too drunk to care. Again.

Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Hamburger Union and Byron are slightly better, with the latter being the best of the bunch. Though I’ve got to say that with Byron Burgers’ rapid expansion throughout London I’ve had mixed experiences at different venues. I also think there’s something fundamentally wrong with paying close to a tenner for a cheeseburger – which by definition should be a lowbrow, low cost food.

The consensus seems to be that the birthplace of the hamburger is the German city of Hamburg where to this day one of the local delicacies is the Frikadelle: a flattened meatball with lots of onion, egg and filler. I’ve eaten the occasional Frikadelle, having spent some time in Germany, and it’s a bit of an acquired taste if you ask me.

But apart from the name and the vague resemblance to Hamburg’s favourite chopped meat snack I don’t think anyone would deny that the hamburger we know today is really an American invention. There are various contradictory claims about who first popularised the burger but most accounts seem to date back to the turn of the twentieth century. And here we are more than a hundred years later, still enjoying a grilled meat patty on a bun, from its most basic version to the simultaneously terrifying and intriguing sounding McAloo Tikki with Cheese.

So can you get a decent hamburger in America? Yes you can. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of terrible versions to be had in the US, but their highs are so much higher than our highs, so to speak. The best American burgers seem to be simpler, purer; letting the core ingredients speak for themselves and focussing on the real star of the show: the salty, crusty, juicy meat.

Take the independently owned In N Out Burger chain, for example. The mere mention is enough to make a hamburger aficionado stare wistfully into the distance, remembering burgers loved and lost / eaten. In N Out has a cult following. Mainly because of the quality of the food, but no doubt partially due to the Secret Menu – all manner of unusual combinations of ingredients that aren’t advertised in store. In fact the secret menu isn’t remotely secret because every regular customer knows their Animal Style from their 4 by 4s, and most of the variations are even listed on the company’s website.

(In case you’re wondering: Animal Style is with grilled onions, extra pickles and ‘spread’ (sauce), and mustard cooked into the patties. 4 by 4 means four patties and four slices of cheese.)


You may hear the singing of a heavenly choir whilst looking at this photo of a Double Double. That's normal.

The problem with In N Out is that they only exist on the Western side of America - California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. In fact one of the company policies is that they will only open a restaurant within one day’s drive of their meat processing plant in Baldwin Park, California. So I’ve got no hope of getting a Double Double anywhere near the office at lunchtime. Being more than five and a half thousand miles away, and all.

Only one thing for it: I’ll have to make my own. I’m not going for an In N Out clone, just a perfectly made, delicious hamburger.

My inspiration was Kenji Alt-Lopez, currently my absolute favourite food writer on the internet. In his Food Lab column on Serious Eats Kenji goes to fabulously absurd lengths to understand the science and cooking technique behind various foods. Want to know how to make the perfect home-made French fries? Kenji is your man. He cooked dozens of batches in his New York apartment, chopping, frying and eating kilos of potatoes until he’d cracked it.

In a recent column Kenji had several In N Out Burgers shipped overnight from the West coast in order to carry out a CSI style forensic investigation and make his own version. If you like food and science this is the site for you.

My recipe for the perfect hamburger is in the next post below.

My perfect hamburger recipe

You can’t make a burger without meat so I headed to Borough market to buy some cuts of beef that I though would give me a good blend of flavour and texture. It’s always tricky trying to apply knowledge from American burger recipes when shopping here because we have different cuts of meat. But the principle remains the same: you need plenty of fat to lubricate the meat during cooking and some flavourful muscle to make the whole thing taste good. The good news is that you get all these attributes from the cheaper, lesser used cuts, so even if you go for high end beef it’s not going to be outrageously expensive.

In the end I bought some feather steak for bulk, a piece of onglet for its gamey flavour and one shortrib with plenty of fat. The perfect combination? I’m not sure, but I liked the look of the pieces of meat and thought they would work well together. And even at extravagantly-priced Borough market the whole lot cost me less than ten pounds.

You could also just buy all chuck steak, which would do a perfectly respectable job, and might be easier to find.



Back at home I dusted off the old meat grinder, which I bought a few years ago when I was experimenting with making sausages. If grinding meat sounds like your idea of fun I would really recommend buying one. They only cost around £35 and will last a lifetime. The quality of minced meat you get out of it is infinitely superior to anything you can buy. I got mine here.



Having said that you can also make these burgers by pulsing the meat in a food processor. But no matter which method you use one thing is absolutely crucial: you MUST chill the meat.

First cut it up into chunks, lay it out onto a baking sheet and put it in the freezer for about 30 minutes. This allows the meat to firm up and means when you come to grind or blend it, it cuts cleanly across the muscle fibres, rather than squashing and smearing them into a raw beef pate. You’ll end up with a much better texture and a juicier finished product. It’s also a good idea to chill any bowls you’ll be using too. And if you’re using a metal meat grinder stick that in the freezer before you use it.

If you’re making burger to eat straight away getting this nice clean cutting and grinding action is the main advantage to semi-freezing the meat. But if you’re making burgers to cook at a later stage (or indeed making sausages) it’s also essential from a food safety point of view. Bacteria breed on the surface of meat, not on the inside. When you grind meat into mince you’re massively increasing the surface area, and effectively turning the whole thing into a potential bacteria All You Can Eat Buffet. But if you keep the meat cold microbial growth is significantly inhibited.

This is nothing to be scared of, so don’t let it put you off, especially for these burgers if you’re cooking them straight away. You just need to keep your equipment clean and your meat cold. That’s all there is to it. Keeping your equipment clean and your meat cold is a useful motto which can be applied to all sorts of life situations, by the way.



I ground the trimmed, fatty short rib once, mixed it in with the other cubes of meat and ground the whole lot again. I then split the mince into quarter pounder sized piles and formed them into burger shapes very gently. The idea is to handle the meat as as little as possible to maintain the loosely packed meaty grain. If you work it too hard the meat fibres start to get sticky and cling to each other, giving you a completely different, more processed texture, like a sausage.



You’ll also notice that there are absolutely no flavourings in this meat. This is another big difference between a high end US burger and the kind of thing you’d get served in a restaurant or a gastropub here. No onions, cumin, herbs, coriander, paprika, garlic, truffle oil, essence of Tibetan wood fungus… nothing.

I too was lost and have now seen the light. I used to try to build up flavour with all sorts of additional aromatics and seasonings before realising that less is more. If you’ve got great beef, then let it taste of beef.

In fact, you may have spotted there isn’t even any salt in the burger. This is for a different reason altogether. And again I have to raise my burger bun in salute to Mr Kenji Alt-Lopez, who carried out a range of experiments on his very subject (an interesting read with photographic evidence).

Adding salt at the grinding or forming stage fundamentally changes the texture of the hamburger. Instead of loose granular pieces of beef you end up with a homogenous sausage-like mass.

Only once you’re ready to cook should you season the burgers with salt and pepper. You’ll need to be quite generous because you’re seasoning the whole burger from the outside. If you’re not cooking them straight away, don’t season them and put them in the fridge. Because you’re dealing with minced meat you probably don’t want to refrigerate the burgers for more than a day or two, but they freeze beautifully.

The burgers are quite loosely packed so they cook best in a hot frying pan or on a hotplate with a little oil. Cook them for 2 to 3 minutes on one side, without poking or moving them about to allow a nice crust to form, then flip them over to finish cooking on the other side and rest.

Getting a decent burger bun is a perennial problem here, one that I haven’t solved yet. But whatever you use give it a good toasting so it can cope with the hot juices flowing out of the burger without disintegrating.

Following Kenji’s In N Out autopsy recipe I served my cheeseburger with a Thousand Island style spread made with Ketchup, pickles and yoghurt (mayo in the original, but alas I’m cursed by my egg allergy).

I also made some fabulously sweet caramelised onions: 3 large onions chopped and sweated in a little butter over a VERY low heat. Whenever they eventually started to catch I added some water and let them carry on reducing. They cooked for about 3 hours, though it wasn’t very labour intensive.



Making your own burgers by grinding meat may seem like a lot of work, but it’s definitely worth the trouble because the end result is infinitely superior to any other method. Have a go yourself and let me know how you got on.

Taste of London

Some pictures from Taste of London 2010 in Regents Park, taken on a phonecam, so a bit rough n ready:

Chicken Satay with the usual trimmings from Paddington Restaurant Tukdin. Also saw a cooking demonstration from their head chef, who seems like a very friendly and talented young man:


Next from Gaucho: Argentine Black Angus steak with chimchuri sauce and humitas (an Argentinian kind of tamale): crushed sweetcorn and masa harina flour steamed in a leaf. Steak had a nice flavour, but the steamed sweetcorn number was spectacular.


The best dish so far from Angela Hartnett's York and Albany: Pistachio crusted lamb cutlet with soused tomatoes and a smoked aubergine puree (served in what I can only describe as a 'turd-shaped-cone'). Tasted great though - weirdly intense brown colour in the puree. Not sure how they achieved that.


Daube of Beef a la nicoise from Le Gavroche, with braised olives and a cheesy soft polenta. Beautifully cooked and wholesome, though not necessarily hot weather food. Michel Roux Jr was pressing the flesh at the stall.


The headline chef today was Rick Stein, who was, slightly bizarrely, there to promote Malaysian food (there's also a whole Malaysian section near the entrance). I've always had a soft spot for old Rick, so it was nice to see him up close and watch his cooking demos. He seemed a bit hot and flustered, and the cooking didn't go quite as planned. But he came across as the same easy going guy he is on TV and the audience loved him. Saw him make a grilled fish and a coconut chicken curry.


Some other famous faces - Georgio Locatelli at his stall (didn't eat there)


And Gok Wan (left) paired up Jun Tanaka (right):


Saving the best to last - the two dishes I sampled from modern Japanese restaurant Dinings. The best food I had at the festival last year also came from Dinings, and I've had dinner there in the meantime. First some chilli garlic black cod. Just sensational.


And finally one of the 'signature dishes', a new concept that's been introduced this year. The signatures are a way of charging even more than the already excessive prices at Taste. But in this case the 8 quid cost was (almost) worth it: Seared wagyu sushi two ways. One with a chunk of seared foie gras on top. Not sure what all the minutely portioned seasonings and sauces on the dish were, but it was definitely the standout dish of the day


So, a fun day out, and some amazing food, but there's one overwhelming flavour that lingers in the mouth: the bitter taste of having been thoroughly milked of your hard earned cash. It costs around 22 pounds just to get in the gate, and then every dish is at least 3 to 4 pounds, with the "mains" costing from 5 upwards. Considering these are all just tasting plates it works out pretty expensive.

I don't think you can come here planning to try a few different dishes without spending at least 50 quid. If you're really going for it and having some drinks it will easily be £75 and up. Great as it was I'm not sure it's worth that much money.

The clever thing to do would probably be to cut out the middle man, save half your money and just go and have dinner at Dinings.

Pepperoni and Anchovy Pizzas

Have been experimenting with making my own pizza dough in recent weeks and think I'm getting close to nailing it. This time I left the dough to rise for 10 hours, despite being worried about it over-rising and collapsing into a gooey mess. But it came out great - makes such a difference to the taste. The longer it rises the longer it has to develop deep, bready flavours.

Next time I'll measure the quantities (rather than just busking them by eye) and post the recipe here.

Beer Snack

Here's something I stumbled across randomly on the internet yesterday: a really simple dish I'd never heard of that's actually rather excellent with a drink - fried chickpeas. I'd credit the website, but don't know what it is anymore... I've made up my own recipe inspired by the idea.

Heat some olive oil in a frying pan and add finely chopped garlic. Open a can of chickpeas, drain and dry, then toss in heavily seasoned flour. I used paprika, chilli, salt and pepper. Fry the chickpeas until crispy, drain on kitchen paper and serve hot with an ice cold beer. They're surprisingly delicious - crunchy and spicy on the outside, like roasted peanuts; mealy and starchy on the inside, like fluffy chips.

Other flavour ideas could be garlic, parsley and lemon zest or curry powder... whatever takes your fancy.



Two new posts in a day after a month-long hiatus! Please let me know if you read and like / hate this blog, because I'm never sure if I'm just writing for my own amusement. If anyone actually cares what I write I'd have a reason to do it more regularly.

Cheers.

EDIT: Credit where it's due. The site that I got the idea from:
http://www.ecurry.com/blog/starters-snacks/fried-chickpeas-or-ceci-frito/

BBQ Blowout

My sister is getting married in October. In America, which is a little inconvenient for most of her friends and relatives. So we had an engagement party in this country for anyone unable / unwilling to travel all the way to San Francisco. I ended up volunteering to prepare all the food, and with 45 people coming it was by far the largest crowd I've ever cooked for.

A formal sit-down meal for that many people would been completely out of my comfort zone, but a barbecue seemed manageable. I've grilled for around 20 people before, so it wasn't a massive step up. Although charcoal is always my first choice we went with a hired gas BBQ. The large cooking surface and sustained heat made a lot of sense for that many people. The last thing I wanted to do was constantly having to re-stoke the coals and wait for them to come up to temperature. So this was the cooking beast we ended up with:




Positives: the gas kept the grill hot for several hours and the vast cooking surface was a bonus.
Negatives: no charcoal flavour; hard to control temperature (surprisingly); only narrow slits on the steel surface, so food steams and fries more than it grills.
Still, on balance probably the right choice for the occasion.

We ordered the meat from Scottish mail-order supplier Donald Russell, after having them recommended by friends. Have to say it was great quality and didn't cost too much. I'll definitely be using them again in the future.

We got three boned legs of lamb, which I marinaded in chillies, onions, garlic and Moroccan spices. Here they are looking like one massive lump of meat with a Weber meat thermometer to make sure they cooked until they were crusty on the outside and nicely pink on the inside.



Next came some Chicken Satay skewers, marinated in garlic, ginger, coconut milk, soy, sugar and turmeric (served with my patented Satay sauce). We also ordered a whole load of Donald Russell steak burgers and sausages.



Then there were the salads, which were (mostly) made the night before:

Pea, baby broadbean, spring onion and mint
Chargrilled sweet peppers
Greek Salad
Carrot, cabbage and apple coleslaw
Mixed beans with lemon zest and parsley
Mixed leaves with shredded beetroot

Plus 6kg of roasted new potatoes, which we forgot to put out and left in the oven until everyone left and we suddenly remembered. Never mind.



Well, everyone left happy. I didn't feel quite as in control of the cooking as I would have done over charcoal, but it all turned out alright...

Grav-trout?

I've always fancied having a go at making Gravlax: Scandinavian cured salmon. So when I recently watched Jamie Oliver making some on his Swedish programme and realised I happened to have some surplus rainbow trout, a lightbulb went on. And I don't just mean the one inside the fridge.

As you may know Gravlax (Swedish) or Gravadlaks (Danish) is salmon cured in sugar, salt and dill. Lax / laks / lachs / lox is the salmon, and Grav literally means grave or tomb, referring to the custom of burying the fish during the curing process.

Having neither a grave nor a salmon on hand, I worked on the assumption that a fridge and rainbow trout would do just fine in my own version of Scandinavian preserved fish: Fridgetrøut.

I mixed 2 tbs coarse salt with 1 tbs golden caster sugar and a whole load of roughly chopped dill. I sprinkled this mixture on top of one trout fillet, sandwiched another fillet on top and wrapped the whole thing up tightly in clingfilm. Then put it into a baking dish to catch any spillage and weighed it down with a couple of heavy things that happened to be lying about. The trout is right at the bottom of this arrangement of kitchenware:



I took an occasional peek and turned the fish over once a day for three days. Then came the unwrapping:



I've read contrasting opinions on whether or not you should rinse the fish at this stage - considering the amount of salt used I thought it was probably a good idea. I dried the fish and sliced it up nice and thin.

Texturally it was still a bit soft and raw-fish like for me. This could be because trout is slightly more delicate than the big butch salmon that I'm used to. Or it could be because I didn't use enough salt and sugar during the curing stage. In which case it serves me right for just busking the ingredients rather than looking up a recipe, or using Jamie's from his recent show.

The situation was easily remedied though by drizzling the fish with a little lemon and letting it stand and firm up for a couple of minutes. I served it with some nice German Rye bread and the traditional Gravlax sauce: just mustard, sugar, pepper, vinegar, dill and oil - whisked up to form an emulsion. It was good.

I suggest that if you're tempted to make some Gravdlax or -trout you look up a proper (safe) recipe and don't just follow mine. Will report back if I get ill...

One Night (not) in Bangkok

I've been seriously crap at updating this post... Anyway, here it is:

Home made prawn crackers are something I've been wanting to have a go at making for a while now. This particular recipe comes from David Thompson's Thai Food (aka Aharn Thai, depending on which way up the book cover is).

You start by mincing up raw prawns with garlic, seasoning it and mixing it into a dough with tapioca flour. Then it's made into a fishy kind of sausage and steamed until the whole thing is cooked.



The sausage is then sliced into very fine discs, which need to be dried in the sun / a cool oven. At this point you have the familiar looking semi-opaque dried chips you can buy from any Chinese or Asian store. Fry 'em up in hot oil and you end up with these:



Honestly? Not worth the effort if you ask me. The end result was a bit chewy in the middle (probably because they weren't sufficiently dried), bland and disappointing. I guess I knew deep down that something as processed as a prawn cracker is best left to the professionals and their big factories. Still it was an interesting experiment.

The Panaeng Beef Curry I also made from a David Thompson recipe was much more successful. Using simmered beef brisket and a home made curry paste. If there's a blender that makes proper curry paste I haven't found it, so I stick to the old fashioned pestle and mortar technique. Takes a long time and makes your arms ache, but the end result is infinitely superior.

Got to say though that the Thompson recipe uses staggering amounts of coconut cream and milk - the finished sauce must be around 40% fat. In future I'll scale this way back so that I don't die of heart disease before I go back for second helpings.

Smoked Anchovies and roasted garlic on toast

There was a Mark Hix recipe in the Independent a couple of weeks ago. It's so simple the word "Recipe" is perhaps overstating the amount of preparation involved. Maybe "assembly" is a better term. I knew it was something I wanted to try. The original article is here:

http://tinyurl.com/fishinmymouth

(or Google "Mark Hix Smoked Anchovies" if you're reading this in the future and the link has expired)

Hix raved about Nardin smoked anchovies, which he said were more like fresh fish than tinned. And having eaten them I couldn't agree more. They're available from Brindisa at Borough, though I'm sure you can find them elsewhere, including on the internet.



They weren't cheap, mind you. £5.50 for 8 large anchovy fillets means this dish is probably best saved for when you feel like splashing out.



It's a really delicious combination. The anchovies had a very pleasing light smokey flavour. And their texture was reminiscent of pickled fresh fish, like a thin version of a rollmops; completely unlike any other tinned anchovies I've eaten.

Thai Dried Crispy Beef

This dish requires a bit of preparation, but is so worth the trouble. It's like a Thai version of beef jerky and is great as a snack or served with rice as a meal. I've made several versions of this - the most basic just involves flavouring the meat with ground coriander and salt, but this version uses lots of garlic and lemongrass for fragrance.

I've seen many recipes that suggest using filet steak - but unless you enjoy burning money there's absolutely no need to use one of the most expensive cuts of meat. Any nice, lean piece of beef that is of a shape that allows you to cut it into thin slices will do. Here I've used a roasting joint and removed any fat or sinew.

Cut the beef into slices across the grain - no thicker than a pound coin. Then put them in the marinade for anywhere between one and twenty-four hours. In my marinade I used:

Lots of minced garlic
Finely cut lemongrass
Ground coriander
Fish Sauce
Oyster Sauce
Good pinch of brown sugar
A splash of Chinese Ricewine



The next step is to dry the beef. In Thailand they do this in the sun. In Britain you could be waiting an awfully long time - in fact you are more likely to desiccate yourself than your beef in the process. So I lay out the strips of meat on a tray with a wire rack and put them in the oven. Use the lowest possible setting, with fan on if you have one. You may want to keep the oven door ajar if it gets to hot.

Basically you want to dry out the surface of the meat, though still leave a bit of softness and give if you squeeze the dried beef. If you dry it out completely it will end up like deliciously spiced shoe leather. But you also don't want it to sit in a lukewarm oven forever. The longer you leave it, the more time bacteria have to breed. So take that as a sensible warning and don't sue me if you get food poisoning. Just use your common sense. It shouldn't take any more than 75 minutes max, turning the meat over halfway.



Once the meat is done you can either prepare it straight away or put it in the freezer for a delicious snack at a later time. The most common way of cooking it is to deep-fry the beef in hot oil. But on this occasion I've just brushed the slices with oil and stuck them under a very hot grill - it's a little healthier and I don't think I'd be able to tell the difference to be honest.

Thai dried beef is great with sweet chilli sauce and beer.

Garlic Palourde Clams

Picked up some clams at Borough Market today. They were Carpetshells, otherwise known as Palourdes, Vongole or Almejas (depending whether you're eating them in France, Italy or Spain, respectively). I wanted to recreate a mouth-watering dish I has at Tierra Brindisa a few months ago. They called them Palourdes Clams a la Plancha - cooked on the grill, but basically clams in a garlic sauce.


I cooked some chopped garlic in olive oil, then added chilli and threw in the clams, along with a slug of white wine. That was it. Then served them up with some wilted greens I also picked up at Borough. No idea exactly what they were, as there was no label, but certainly some member of the brassica family. Finished off with some nice rye bread.



A closer look at the clams below. Unfortunately the batteries in my camera died, so all the images in this post are crappy mobile phone shots.

Phat Phuc Noodle Bar

Had a serious case of lunch fatigue today – I’ve pretty much exhausted all the options around where I work, so I decided to go on a culinary mystery tour instead. This involved jumping on the first bus that pulled up opposite the office on Westminster Bridge Road, which as it turned out was the 211 to Hammersmith.

I grabbed a front window seat on the empty upper deck. It took me through Westminster along past Victoria Station and on to Sloane Square, where I decided to jump out.

I was starting to lose faith in my good-food-sensing powers walking along the Kings Road: Pret, Eat, Starbucks. Same old same old. But then a waft of fragrant spiced broth hit me in the nostrils and I walked down some steps into a shady courtyard right on the corner of the Kings Road and Sydney Street.

I’m sure if you live in Chelsea Phat Phuc is hardly an unheard-of discovery for you. But it’s exactly the kind of place I dream about stumbling across by accident: a shack with a counter serving cheap Vietnamese food, and a number of wooden tables covered in red parasols.

I ordered the Bo Pho: beef broth with stewed flank, rice noodles and herbs for £5.50, and it was delivered to my table about 90 seconds later. Just what I needed on a blustery and cool March day. The broth was more golden than other phos I’ve eaten, and fair bit sweeter – maybe a touch too sweet for my taste. But that’s my only minor quibble as it was a cracking bowl of hot soup with plenty of herbs and pleasantly chewy brisket.



I was also impressed with the condiments on the tables: sugar, powdered chilli, chilli oil and a dish of crispy shallots that you help yourself to. It went down so quick the bowl was still steaming when I’d finished.



Next time I jump on the 211 bus I’ll definitely make a return visit. Oh and by the way, Phat Phuc is not what you shout at someone that’s eaten too many noodles. Apparently it means “Happy Buddha”.

www.phatphucnoodlebar.com

Roast Dinner Rarebit

Well, I won't claim this is haute cuisine. I was trying to come up with a creative way to use up the two day old leftovers from my Sunday roast. I didn't feel like knocking up a sauce or doing anything as elaborate as a pie or soup. So I came up with the Roast Dinner Rarebit.

I chopped up all the leftovers into smallish pieces: roast chicken, potatoes, brocolli and cauliflower cheese. Then mixed in a big spoonful of English mustard and some of the jelliefied gravy and spread the whole lot on a wholemeal baguette.



Then I sprinkled over some mature chedder and whacked the whole thing in the oven until hot and bubbling.



It would probably go quite well with a side salad, but I just opted for a good squeeze of Chilli Ketchup.

Chicken Satay

Chicken Satay has been a stalwart crowd-pleaser in my repertoire for many years - especially during BBQ season. I spent several years as a kid in Holland, where Satay and Pindasaus (Peanut Sauce) is such a major part of the culinary culture that they serve it in snackbars. They even pour the moorish peanut sauce over chips: you really have to taste it to know how amazing that combination is.

Obviously Satay doesn't originate in the Netherlands. Its popularity is due to the influence of former Dutch colony Indonesia and can be seen in the abundance of Indonesian restaurants with their Rijstafels and dishes such as Nasi Goreng.

My peanut sauce is very simple, and very much inspired by the Dutch version found in fast food joints.

As for the Satay itself, I'm not sure if any country can claim absolute ownership. I've sampled beautifully grilled meat-on-stick-combos in Thailand and Singapore, though it's perhaps even more at home in Malaysia and Indonesia. I've also heard that the word satay comes from a Chinese phrase for "three pieces" (of meat).

And there are more recipes for the dish than countries that serve it. Some use coriander; curry paste; coconut milk; lemongrass... Mine is pretty straightforward, though I've tried others that are very tasty. Including some of the 16 different versions in Steven Raichlen's magnificent Barbecue Bible. If you like grilled meat buy one of his books.

Anyway, here's my version:

Chicken Satay:

400g Chicken cut into bite-sized chunks (thigh is my preference, but breast is fine)
4 cloves of Garlic
Inch long piece of Ginger
1 Teaspoon of Turmeric powder (gives it the characteristic yellow colour, fresh turmeric would be even better)
1 Teaspoon sugar
1.5 Tablespoons Soy Sauce (or Fish Sauce if you prefer)
Healthy glug of Vegetable oil
Pinch of Salt
A generous grind of Black Pepper

Mash up the garlic, ginger, salt, pepper, sugar and turmeric in a big pestle and mortar, or blender. Add the oil, soy sauce. Marinade the chicken pieces in this mixture for as long as you please - anywhere between 30 minutes to a few hours. Put it in the fridge if its more than half an hour.

When you're ready to go thread the chicken onto wooden skewers that have been soaked in water so they don't catch fire.



For best results cook on a BBQ, but if it's a sub-zero February night like tonight you can also get a great result indoors. Option 1 is using a griddle pan. My preference is Option 2: use a grill. Heat it to absolute smoking-hot-maximum and put the Satay on a tray, using tinfoil to cover the skewers.



Then put them as close to the grill elements as you dare without touching - no more than one inch away. This isn't for the faint-hearted and will fill your kitchen with smoke, but the results are worth it.

Cook until the top is nice and crusty, turn over and cook the other side. Check that the chicken is cooked through - if not leave it in a warm oven for a few minutes until it's good to eat.

Satay Sauce:

This sauce is so great you'll never want to eat any other Satay again. And it's embarrassingly easy. This has been a trademark dish of mine for a long time, and I'm actually in two minds about giving it away...

2 mounded tbs Peanut Butter - smooth or crunchy. Whatever floats your boat.
1 tbs Ketchup - I know. You're thinking "Ketchup???!". Don't forget the word Ketchup comes from the Indonesian Ketjap Manis.
1 tbs Soy Sauce
1 tsp to 1 tbs Sambal Oelek (ground chili paste in vinegar). You could also mince up a chili or use chili flakes plus a touch of vinegar.
1 tsp sugar if you think the sauce isn't sweet enough - depends on the peanut butter you're using.

Mix the ingredients together in a saucepan over a low heat and add hot water from a kettle to thin it out to a good sauce consistency. Heat through in the pan, taste for seasoning, and you're done.

I served my Satay with a Thai flavoured salad of crunchy vegetables, lime, fish sauce and chili,

Impromptu Prawn Curry

Friday night, no real food shopping options in the vicinity of my office... so I ended up at home with an end-of-week beer in my hand and nothing to eat.

Nothing of great interest in the fridge, but there was a bag of frozen tiger prawns in the freezer. I've made Gambas al Pil Pil (Spanish style prawns in chili garlic olive oil) on many occasion, including from frozen prawns, but wasn't really in the mood for them tonight.

The only other dish I could think of, given the limited ingredients in my fridge, was some kind of bodge-job curry. Now, I'll freely admit that Indian food isn't my forte. I'm much more comfortable with French, British, Chinese, Thai, Spanish... pretty much any other world cuisine. I put it down to many uninspiring, similarly bland curry house disappointments in my life.

I have on occasion had spectacular Indian food in the more ambitious or authentic restaurants, so I know the good stuff is out there, but I can't say that it's really part of my amateur chef's repertoire.

But tonight the limited available ingredients seemed to be shouting out "Curry". I won't claim for a second that what I cooked is in any way remotely authentic, but it's got more in common with curry than any other dish I can think of...

Curry Paste:

1 Large Onion

3 Spring Onions

5 Cloves of Garlic

1 Red Chili

1 Fennel Bulb (it was sitting in the fridge, so why not?)

2 Red Peppers (Tomatoes would have been nice but beggars can't be choosers)

Salt

Pepper

Pinch of sugar

Garam Malasa that was sitting in my cupboard

Blitz the whole lot up until it's a smooth paste. Fry in oil until aromatic, then add some hot water to stop it browning and sticking; and turn down the heat. Cook for an hour or two on a low simmer. Top up with hot water as needed to stop the sauce catching.

Once I had a nice looking curry sauce I threw in my frozen prawns, and a few minutes later some left-over cooked lentils. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the prawns to cook through - not long.

A final check for seasoning - maybe add a touch of vinegar / citrus to balance the flavours (my lentils were in a vinaigrette, so did the same job).

It's not authentic, bit it certainly hits the spot on a Friday night when your fridge is bare. And the beauty is that you could add or replace most of the ingredients in this recipe with something similar and still end up with a great meal.

Chargrilled Ribeye and Cavolo Nero

My office is near Westminster Bridge and that means on a Thursday and Friday the spectre of Borough Market is always at the back of my mind. It's easy enough to walk there (around 20 mins) but the challenge is to get there and back within a reasonable lunch break. Still, if I walk one way; time it just right and get a bus in the other direction it can be done. Just.

I'm here for a steak and after a bit of walk around gravitate to my usual choice: the Ginger Pig. The main thing I'm looking for is thickness.

The problem I have with many butchers / meat packers / steak cutters in this country? When I buy a steak I don't want it just a centimetre or two thick. Whats's the bloody good in that? There's no way to cook a thin sliver of a steak properly. You might as well give me a slice of carpaccio and tell me to whack it on the barbie.

The advantage of buying from a proper butcher is that you can ask for steaks to be cut exactly as thick as you like. And I like 'em thick.

You cannot get the most out of a steak unless it's thick enough to get a proper crust and still have the inside juicy and pink. If you're enough of a foodie geek to be reading a blog called 'Whats In My Mouth' I'm sure I don't need to tell you that.

I've been refining my perfect steak technique for a while now and will write about it in a future date. Not in the Heston Blumenthal 48 hour vacuum-packed sous-vide followed by throwing-half-away-and-getting-a-minion-to-finish-it-for-you way, but with a method that any untrained amateur cook, such as myself, can use at home.

More about that later. But for now I just wanted a chunky steak about an inch and a half thick. Ginger Pig had some nice looking Ribeye, and I got a very handsome steak, though it came to an eye watering 11 pounds.

Next a stop at one of the vegetable stalls. I saw some wonderfully dark and firm Cavolo Nero. Have never cooked it myself, but the River Cafe ladies harp on about it on their TV show, so thought it was worth a go.

Gave the steak a marinade in crushed rosemary, garlic and olive oil, then cooked it under a spanking hot grill. The Cavolo Nero I chopped, blanched and then fried off in butter with garlic. Turned out pretty good all together.