cookbook challenge #2

[About the New Years' resolution behind this]

From "Dish It Up", by Simon Holst, I made homemade burgers.

OK, I know this seems like cheating a little and isn't really a real recipe - all I knew when I got home was that I REALLY felt like a burger. So I found a recipe book that promised to sate my hunger, and adapted it for my vegetarian flatmate. Two down, fifteen to go.

For Vegie-flatmate, I bought falafel mix, and cooked some burger patties out of it. I hope she liked it! She's very polite! (By the way, does anyone have a good recipe for making one's own falafel? I tried to make it out of broad beans once, and the result literally made me retch.)

As for the meaty burgers for the rest of us, the only non-obvious instructions are these:

500g / 1 oz minced beef (premium)
1 cup breadcrumbs
1 egg
1 teaspoon garlic salt

Mix all together with your bare (clean) hands - providing you don't feel sickened by raw meat, this is gloriously squelchy. They should make four large patties but would easily stretch to six medium ones.

I cooked them on our grill (i.e. a George Foreman-type thing) which seemed to work better than a frypan, given that they're quite fat, solid patties.

Then I put them between burger buns with tomato relish, red onion, cheese and salad greens.

Afterwards, I felt completely satisfied. A big thumbs-up from me.

I promise that next time I will do a proper, serious, grown-up recipe, which is more in keeping with the spirit of my New Year's resolution.