Category: BBQ

Andalusian Pork

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves: 4

What a simple, gutsy dish!

The Spanish certainly do have some fun with their food and after a day marinating and then chargrilled on a really hot grill, this pork is sensational.

And it’s healthy. Ha!

I’ve cooked this and served this a few times over the years though last night it was with eggplant chips, some steamed sugar snaps and a great Bobby Flay Spanish Potato Salad.

A great end to the week and fuel for the start of the new working year. Here is to 2016!

Ingredients

2 tbsp paprika
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried thyme
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tbsp coarse sea salt
1 tbsp olive oil
500g pork fillet, trimmed of any fat
2 lemons, cut into wedges, to serve

Method

  1. Mix the paprika, oregano, garlic and salt with the olive oil to make a thick paste.
  2. Spread the paste evenly over the pork, cover and marinate in the fridge for 24 hours.
  3. Cut the meat on the diagonal, around 2cm thick.
  4. Heat a griddle, heavy frying pan or a grill until very hot. Cook the pork for 3 – 4 minutes on each side until cooked through.
  5. Serve at once with the lemon wedges.

The Tuscan Burger

.Reading time 2 minutes.

My last meal? A hamburger of course.

With this Tuscan Burger, read down the ingredients and you can almost taste the pesto with the chargrilled beef and melted bocconcini, the mayonaise and the chargrilled buns.

Hopefully this isn’t your last meal and as my mother is known to say, the recipe shouldn’t kill anyone. But if it does, not a bad way to go.

As always, go for the best, freshest piece of chuck steak you can and get your butcher to mince it on the coarsest cut.

Ingredients

600g freshly ground chuck steak
100g pancetta, rind removed, chopped
1/3 cup (90g) basil pesto
2 small red onions, thickly sliced
2 tbs olive oil
2 small vine-ripened tomatoes, thickly sliced
1/2 cup (150g) whole-egg mayonnaise
3-4 bocconcini, sliced
4 Italian bread rolls, split
50g baby rocket leaves

Method

  1. Place beef, pancetta and 2 tablespoons pesto in a processor. Season with salt and pepper. Pulse until just combined (do not overprocess). Form mixture into 4 patties and chill while you cook the vegetables.
  2. Preheat the oven to 160°C.
  3. Heat a chargrill pan or barbecue over medium heat. Toss onion in a little oil and grill for 1 minute each side or until just cooked. Place in the oven to keep warm.
  4. Brush tomatoes with a little oil and season, then grill for 1 minute each side. Place in the oven to keep warm.
  5. Brush both sides of patties with oil. Cook on chargrill for 2-3 minutes each side until cooked through. Chargrill the bread rolls.
  6. Mix remaining pesto with mayonnaise.
  7. Top patties with cheese and place in oven for 1 minute or until cheese melts.
  8. Spread bread-roll bases with some of the mayonnaise mixture. Top with rocket, patties, onion and tomato. Drizzle with remaining mayonnaise mixture and top with remaining bread-roll halves

Neil Perry’s ‘Hamburger’

.Reading time 5 minutes.

Serves 4

Whilst the 2013/2014/2015 Sydney hamburger craze will probably go the direction of the 2013/2014/2015 Sydney dumpling craze, for me at least, it has given me cause to reconsider the roots of a good – a great burger – and what it is all about.

Because if you have a burger at Chur Burger, or Neil Perry’s Burger Project or Sean Connolly’s Parlour Burger (with the one-day viral wonder, the Black Widow Burger), their core burger is about simplicity and quality of ingredient.

And that is perhaps where I have gone astray.

For years, my signature burger dish has been about two things:

  1. The paddy:
    1. 1kg Beef Mince
    1. 1 egg
    1. (Red) online, diced
    1. Handful of parsley, chopped
    1. A number of really good splashes of Worcestershire Sauce (and therefore the flavour)
    1. A heaped teaspoon of Horseradish
    1. Seasoning
  9. The balance:Grilled (BBQ) slices of white toast
    1. Torn cos lettuce
    1. Sliced tomato
    1. Sliced cheddar cheese to melt on the BBQed paddies
    1. Ketchup (not tomato sauce), good egg mayo and American Mustard

And whilst, if really flame grilled over a high heat and served medium-rare, this is a cracker burger, it isn’t the essence of burger. It is like customising mac and cheese when the purity of proper mac and cheese needs no improvement. It is like adding bacon to a Big Mac. There isn’t necessarily a need.

Worst still, I was using crappy mince from the supermarket. And the mince is where the flavour is!

Indeed, reflecting back on all the burgers I have cooked over the years – including the Tuscan Burger than won me a gong at a Wiliam food day – they have all been about stuffing ingredients into the patty. And using crudolla mince.

This burger recipe by Neil Perry is your classic mac and cheese. It will surprise nobody except that freshness of the meat makes the difference. Here, you MUST instruct your butcher to find his finest, most marbled piece of chuck steak. And then to grind it, fresh, on his coarsest setting.

At which point, you need to sprint home to cook it.

Get back to basics, invest in the meat, buy some really good buns (not that crap at Woolies), open a Corona with some lime and eat this bad boy in the sun. Seriously, this is good!

Oh, and if you can BBQ your buns and especially bacon on the BBQ as well, the taste simply gets even better by a factor of 10: Neil Perry says so himself!

I have slightly adjusted his recipe.

Ingredients

1kg of freshly ground chuck steak
½ – ¾ tsp sea salt
Extra virgin olive oil
4 hamburger buns, split and toasted (ideally grilled on the BBQ)
Ketchup, American Mustard and egg mayonnaise
4 slices gruyere (or sliced cheddar if gruyere not on tap)
8 rashes of good bacon
Lettuce and tomato slices
Sliced, picked cucumber (optional)
Freshly ground pepper

Method

  1. The bacon needs to be really, really crispy and this will take time. Depending on timings, start cooking the bacon in a pan or prepare it ready for the BBQ, ensuring that in either event, it is cooked to the point of snapping in two.
  2. Place the meat in a bowl and sprinkle with salt. Mix gentle and divide into 4. Move each portion between your hands for a minute to make a firm, though not overworked patty. Shape into a ball. Gently flatten to form patties around 3cm thick. (If you are refrigerating, cover in cling wrap and ensure that they are bought back to room temperature prior to cooking).
  3. Heat your BBQ (or pan) to very hot. Grill the burger for 2 minutes on one side, flip and another 3 minutes, placing a slice of cheese on top of each paddy for the final minute of cooking. Let the patties rest for 5 minutes and whilst doing so, grill your buns, taking note of your bacon depending on however you are cooking it.
  4. Assemble your bad boy; bottom of bun, mayo and mustard, patty, lettuce and tomato, bacon, ketchup, grind of pepper, top of bun.
  5. Close your eyes and eat.