Le Mitraillette World Cup Burger

The nice folks at Waitrose asked us to pick a side and come up with a football-inspired burger, so we banged our heads together and came up with the ultimate Belgium burger.

Belgium has a strong entry for a national sandwich - the Mitraillette (which translates as the machine gun).

It's traditionally a combination of meat and veggies covered in fries served with a curious burger sauce which just happens to be called 'Brésil' sauce.

We've eschewed the traditional baguette for a classic bun, but a huge baguette could work well for large groups.

So without further ado, we bring you our adaptation.

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Le Fusil de Dembele AKA The Burger Anarchy Mitraillette

Ingredients

• 200g minced chuck (70%) and skirt (30%) beef (ask your friendly Waitrose butcher to help with this)
• 375ml Duvel Golden Ale
• A couple of lemons
• Golden Granulated Sugar
• Waitrose Frites
• Sliced Dutch Gouda (Belgian cheese is hard to find)
• Sliced Port Salut cheese
• 250g good French mayonnaise
• Tomato puree
• 2 onions
• 2 carrots
• Romaine lettuce
• A large white giant bap
• Jack Hawkins slicing tomato
• A bunch of flat leaf parsley
• Salt and pepper
• Unsalted butter
• Tin of pineapple chunks in juice

Method

There are a number of things we need to prepare before the meat can hit the grill on this one, so let's tackle each in order.

Brésil sauce:

1. Mix together in a medium bowl 250g Mayonnaise, 2 tbsp finely chopped onions, 2 tbsp Tomato Puree.
2. Drain and chop the pineapple chunks, retaining about half the juice.
3. Add the pineapple chunks to a saucepan on a high heat with 1 tbsp of sugar. Stir regularly and cook until the fruit is soft and caramelised.
4. Puree the fruit in the saucepan using a small immersion blender (or a food processor if you don't have one).
5. Allow the pineapple to cool down to room temperature then add to the other ingredients with 1 tbsp of lemon juice and then add salt to taste.
6. Add to your sauce bottle if you want to get fancy.

Sweet bière onions:

1. Halve and slice the onions (but don't dice them, you want to be able to see the half moon slices)
2. Add the Duvel, 1 tbsp sugar, and bring to a steady boil in a cast iron pan.
3. Add the onions and simmer until liquid reduces down (about 20-30 mins).
4. Once reduced and no longer runny, place in a bowl and keep warm.

Carottes Râpées:

1. Peel and finely grate 2 carrots (a Magimix is really handy here for speedy grating)
2. Place in a mixing bowl, add 1 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp of lemon juice, 1 tsp of sugar.
3. Coarsely chop the parsley and add to the carrot mix.
4. Mix it all together, add salt and pepper to taste and more lemon juice if it needs it.

NB. The carrots should only have a very light coating of dressing, you don't want them dripping otherwise it will oversaturate the burger.

Frites:

• Cook according to instructions on packet.

Seriously, boxed chips these days are so good, you don't want to faff about triple cooking some chips for this recipe.

The patty:

1. Wet your hands and gently form 200g of mince into a patty roughly the size of the bap.
2. Thumb a divot into the centre of the patty (to stop it from shrinking when cooking).
3. Liberally salt the bottom of the patty and place in very hot cast iron frying pan or grill pan. Non-stick pans are useless to you here.
4. Liberally salt top of the patty and flip halfway through cooking to your preference.
5. 1 minute before the patty is ready, place a slice of gouda and port salut on top, add water to the pan and cover with a cloche or large pan lid to melt it.

The bap:

• Slice the bap, spread with butter and lightly toast in a dry frying pan.

Assemble the sandwich:

1. Sauce the bottom bun
2. Lettuce leaf
3. Tomato slice
4. Carottes Râpées
5. Patty with cheese
6. Sweet Biere onions
7. A healthy handful of frites
8. More sauce
9. Add the top bun

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• Rob & Simon.
• Extra special thanks to Waitrose for their help with this recipe, and the poor butcher at the Westfield branch who withstood our double mincing demands with aplomb.
• A few of the others are worth a shot, you can find them over on the Waitrose site.

Peanut Butter and Bacon French Toast Sandwich

Because every week is sandwich week, really.

This recipe works best with some nicely staled challah - we get ours from Costco. Don’t make any plans to do anything for at least a few hours afterwards.

Serves 2-3

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• ground cinnamon
• 300ml of whole milk
• 50ml of double cream
• Skippy Smooth peanut butter
• 6-8 rashers of smoked streaky bacon
• 1tbsp of vanilla extract
• at least half a stick of unsalted butter to hand at room temperature
• icing sugar
• blueberries
• maple syrup
• 2/3 stale challah rolls (or other white bread)

Method

1. Preheat the oven and throw the bacon in on a baking tray.

2. Beat the eggs, milk and cream together lightly. Add in a good dash of cinnamon and the vanilla extract.

3. Pour the mixture in to a flat bottomed dish.

4. Halve your rolls and submerge them into the dish for a minute, flip and then do the other side too. Try to get as good a covering as you can so the mixture has really soaked in.

5. Melt a healthy knob of butter in your favourite pan.

6. Batch fry the toast, making sure the pan doesn’t get too hot and brown the butter too much. 2-3 minutes per side should do it but you can flip pretty regularly. Keep going until they’re a pleasing golden brown.

7. Once the toast is cooked, let them cool a little and then add a healthy dollop of peanut butter. Smooth works best with this recipe since it’ll melt quickly and is easier to spread without ruining the finish of your toast.

8. The bacon should nicely crisp by this stage - wipe off any excess grease with some kitchen towel, snap them in two and put them on top of one half.

9. Apply the top half, add a liberal dose of maple syrup, a cursory handful of blueberries on the side and sieve a layer of icing sugar on top.

10. Cancel your plans for the rest of the day.

• Simon.

[RECIPE] Bacon Pickle Animal Cheese Sauce

Last weekend, we defeated rain and spread happiness throughout Brick Lane with Hot Dog hero Big Apple Hot Dogs as part of his quasi-competitive food blogger meetup #BlogEATBlog.

We didn’t think it would be worthwhile doing anything too subtle or off-brand, so here’s our down and dirty entry. It’s a four element topping: cheese sauce with bacon, an In-n-Out style ‘Animal’ sauce, chopped pickle and bacon crumbs. Here’s the recipe for the cheese bit.

The end result looked like this on the day, so here’s the recipe so you too can make it at home. It goes great with nachos.

Ingredients

This makes about 1.5 litres. Which is way more than you probably want.

• Six tablespoons of flour
• At least a pint of full fat milk
• Frank’s Hot Sauce
• Chipotle Tabasco
• Kraft cheese
• About a dozen slices of American cheese
• A pack of streaky bacon (we like Oscar Mayer for this recipe)
• Two dill pickles

Method

Lob six tablespoons of flour and a cup of milk into a bowl and mix until smooth. Lumpy sauce is bogus.

Take your bacon, lay it on baking tray and bung that in a preheated oven at about 180-200 degrees. Lowish and slowish, since we’re after crispness here folks.

While the bacon is crisping, put the flour and milk mixture into a saucepan and bring it up to a gentle simmer. While it’s coming up to temperature, chop your Kraft block into nice manageable chunks.

When the flour and milk have combined into a nice runny sauce, drop the cheese in. It’s best to introduce it in batches. Remember, Kraft is not real cheese, so it will melt slowly. Don’t turn the heat up, keep it low and slow.

Once the Kraft has disintegrated, throw your American cheese slices in. They’ll melt much quicker and change the mixture colour in a most pleasing way.

Keep it hot and check for a nice gloopy consistency. It should look like this:

Now, grab your two best friends.

Generously apply Frank’s first. Mix well and check flavour. Frank’s adds salt, flavour and colour. So this is up to you.

Do exactly the same with your Tabasco.

Dice your pickles, then dice your bacon (which you should take out the oven about now).

Introduce half of your bacon into the cheese sauce.

Mix it all up and you’re done!

To make the dog, line the bun with animal sauce, insert your frank, dollop a healthy amount of cheese sauce on top and finish with the diced pickle and bacon.