Beef and pork burger

Combining beef and pork mince in the one burger is a very good idea. For starters, it's a flavoursome combination. And too, the pork mince is or at least should be fatty. Fattier than the beef mince. That fat, that glorious fat, will keep the patties moist as you cook them.



Ingredients:

200 g beef mince
200 g pork mince
4 slices Swiss cheese
4 small slices of rindless bacon
4 good quality rolls, opened
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tomato, sliced and seasoned with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 red onion, finely diced
handful mixed lettuce leaves
1 tbs Dijon mustard
1 tbs tomato ketchup
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
sea salt, to taste
Tabasco sauce, to taste
olive oil

The day before, combine the beef mince, pork mince and minced garlic. Add freshly ground black pepper, sea salt and Tabasco sauce to taste. Form seasoned mince into four patties and place on a plate. Use your thumb to make an indentation in the top of each patty. Cover with cling film and refrigerate overnight.

Make the sauce by combining the Dijon mustard, tomato ketchup and onion. Season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Season the tomato slices with a little sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Fry the patties over a medium-low flame. When liquid starts to pool on top, flip them carefully. The secret to keeping patties in one piece isn't to add saw dust (i.e. supermarket-bought bread crumbs) or egg. It's thus--don't add that'll reduce their structural integrity (i.e. onion), refrigerate for a few hours or overnight once formed and cook slowly.

Meanwhile, lightly toast the burger buns under the broiler. When buns are toasted, increase the temperature of the broiler and add the slices of bacon. Drizzle a little olive on them and broil until crispy.

Place the lettuce on the lower bun, then add, in the following order, the bacon, the cheese, the beef and pork patty, the tomato and a spoonful of sauce.

Barbecue pork pizza

Following on from yesterday's post about making the perfect pizza base in a domestic oven, I figured I'd provide a suggestion for a topping combination. Remember that pizza has few rules. Once you perfect the base, you're free to experiment with the toppings. I mean, just because the local takeaway doesn't put a particular ingredient on a pizza doesn't mean you can't.
The recipe for the perfect pizza, along with the associated 'rules' for pizza making, can be found here.

Ingredients:

1 ball of pizza dough (see original article)
75 mL tomato passata (aka sugo)
8 thin slices salami
5 balls of boccocini cheese, sliced
2 good quality pure pork sausages
2 slices pan-sized bacon, diced
1 onion, sliced
splash of Worcester sauce
freshly ground black pepper
sea salt

Use a paring knife to slit the sausage skin. Extract the meat. Take pinches of the meat and roll it into meatballs. Season meatballs with salt and pepper and pan fry, along with bacon, until cooked through. Set aside to cool.

Pre-heat the oven to 230*C for a good twenty minutes, as per usual. When ready to cook, remove stone slab/oven tray from oven and drop the oven temperature to 200*C. Roll the base out directly onto the slab/tray, dusting the slab/tray with corn flour if you feel it necessary. Roll the pizza base about 7 millimetres thick. If you roll it too thin, it won't come out as well as it should.

Combine tomato passata with a generous splash of Worcester sauce. Spread the passata over the pizza. Distribute the sliced boccocini cheese evenly across the base. Top with pork meatballs, salami, bacon and onion. Bake pizza for 20 minutes or until base is crispy and golden.

Artichoke, bacon and mushroom pizza

Following on from yesterday's post about making the perfect pizza base in a domestic oven, I figured I'd provide a suggestion for a topping combination. Remember that pizza has few rules. Once you perfect the base, you're free to experiment with the toppings. I mean, just because the local takeaway doesn't put a particular ingredient on a pizza doesn't mean you can't.
The recipe for the perfect pizza, along with the associated 'rules' for pizza making, can be found here.

Ingredients:

1 ball of pizza dough (see original article)
75 mL tomato passata (aka sugo)
5 balls of boccocini cheese, sliced
4 jarred artichoke hearts, drained and torn into three or four pieces
2 pan-sized pieces of bacon, diced
handful of mushrooms of your choosing, sliced
truffle oil (optional)

Fry the diced bacon for a couple of minutes and set aside to cool. It's important to cook bacon before putting it on a pizza.

Meanwhile, pre-heat the oven to 230*C. After twenty minutes at this temperature, remove the stone slab/oven tray from the oven and drop the temperature to 200*C. If you're paranoid about your dough sticking to the slab, dust it with a little corn flour (this shouldn't be necessary if you follow my dough recipe, though). Roll the dough out directly on the slab to a thickness of roughly 7 millimetres (there's no need to measure it).

Combine tomato passata with a few drops of truffle oil, if using. Spread over pizza base. Evenly distribute the slices of boccocini cheese over the pizza base. Top pizza with bacon, mushroom and artichoke hearts, then cook in the oven for 20 minutes or until base is crispy and golden. Drizzle a little truffle oil over the pizza before serving.

'Boerewors' pot pie

Boerewors is a heavily spiced South African sausage. Some contain only beef, but my favourite variety includes the ingenious combination of beef, pork and bacon. It wasn't long after I first had this variety of boerewors that I was inspired to make a pie using the same spices and meats. Because I have little patience for pastry at the best of times, it'd be a pot pie. That being said, if you want to create a short crust base or create 'party pies' in a muffin tin, go right ahead. I'll eventually get around to doing the later, as I'd like to be able to give my girlfriend something nice to take to work for lunch.

Too, you might've noticed that there's a lot of coriander (cilantro) in this dish. South Africans love their coriander. Don't worry about it if you're not the greatest fan of the stuff, though, as the flavour of the spices will mellow considerably during cooking.

400 grams each of pork and beef (for the beef, go for chuck steak or stewing steak), cut into 2-3 centimetre cubes
100 grams of bacon, diced (you can also use the more expensive spek)
4 tbs freshly ground coriander
2 tbs sea salt
1 tbs freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp freshly ground allspice
1/4 tsp freshly ground cloves
500mL beef stock (if you haven't made your own, at least spend a little extra to get good quality stuff)
2 small onions or one large one, sliced
a couple of springs of fresh thyme
a couple of cloves of garlic, crushed
a generous splash of Worcester sauce
a splash of red wine vinegar
a splash of brandy or cognac
a generous pinch of corn flour
an egg, beaten
a splash of milk
a sheet of store-bought puff pastry, thawed

Combine the dried spices in a bowl. Rub into the cubes of pork and bacon. Place in the fridge for a few hours, covered.

On a low flame, heat a little oil in a large saucepan. Fry the garlic and onion, stirring constantly. When they start to soften, add the pork and beef and seal them lightly. Once sealed, add a splash of brandy, a splash of red wine vinegar and a generous splash of Worcester sauce. Let it sizzle away for a moment and then add the beef stock. Add the diced bacon and a couple of springs of fresh thyme. Simmer on a very low heat, partly covered, for a couple of hours or until the meat is very tender. Season with extra salt, pepper and Worcester sauce if you feel it necessary. Remove the springs of thyme and add a generous pinch of corn flour. Stir it in and remove the saucepan from the heat. The 'stew' won't thicken immediately, so don't keep adding corn flour under the assumption you haven't used enough--it'll thicken as it cools. It's possible and, indeed, preferable to make the filling the day before you serve the pie.

Pre-heat the oven to 180*C. Pour the cooled filling into a pie pan. It should be thick. If it's quite obviously too thick, add a little splash of stock. Place the pastry sheet over the pie pan, ensuring you it is completely covered. Trim off any excess pastry. Use a skewer or the tip of a paring knife to prick a few holes in the pastry--this will allow the steam to escape. Finally, combine the milk and the beaten egg in a cup or other small vessel. Using a pastry or basting brush, brush the milk/egg wash all over the pastry. Place the pie in the oven for 20-30 minutes or until the pastry has turned crispy and golden.

Wild boar sandwiches

I recently managed to get my hands on some wild boar tenderloin. I looked around online and through my cookbook collection, trying to find a suitable recipe. I wanted something simple, something that'd let me enjoy the meat for what it was. I didn't want to overwhelm it with a strong-flavoured sauce. It wasn't long before I got tired of looking through curry and casserole recipes and settled on making a simple sandwich.

My wild boar came in strips of the perfect size for sandwiches. If yours doesn't, you're going to have to cut it. Place one wild boar strip for each diner into a bowl along with two or three cloves of garlic, season with black pepper, cover with olive oil, seal in cling film and refrigerate for a few hours or overnight. Remove from refrigerator a hour before cooking. Pre-heat broiler to medium-high.

Take a tomato, slice it and season it with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Broil for 5-7 minutes a side. While I'm normally against cooking anything well-done, you want to make sure your boar is properly cooked as it's wild-shot. Season the tenderloins with salt and pepper when you turn them. Season them again when you remove them. If you feel like having bacon in your sandwich, broil it now.

Meanwhile, prepare the rest of the sandwich. Open the rolls--I hope you bought nice ones. Add some rocket leaves, finely sliced red onion, the bacon (if using) and the wild boar tenderloin. Top a slice or two of tomato.

Really, that's all I did. And I was very happy with it. I intend, next time, to maybe cook some kebabs over a coal fire.