Here for the goat cheese burger with courgette chips? Who could blame you – even I’ve got a semi-on just thinking about it. It’s lines like that which stop me getting a job in Good Housekeeping, isn’t it? Still, I’m doing better than the poor sod at Virgin Trains, but we’ll touch on that tomorrow. I didn’t know whether to post this as two separate recipes but hey, let’s live life on the edge today, and combine it as one. But first: shenanigans. Remember, scroll to the pictures of the food if you don’t want to read my waffle.
First day back at work today after about a billion weeks off. Does anyone else find it utterly infuriating having to work? You mustn’t get me wrong, I really do love my job and I work with some wonderful people (HR STATUS CHECKER: CLEAR) but by God it is such a battle not to steer my car straight into the central reservation every single morning at 8.20am. You know how some people are morning people who breeze out of bed at 5am with a cheery smile on their face and their day full of promise? Well they can piss off. The only time I ever get out of my bed that early is if I’ve shat in it.
What I can’t get my head around is where everyone else is going at that time in the morning. Logically, they’re all going to work just like me, or worse, dropping their crotchfruit off at school for a few hours, but emotionally, I feel like they’ve all climbed into their car just to get in my way. I try listening to music to gee me along and lift my spirits but my Spotify is broken and the recommended music keeps recommending Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Yes Sir I Can Boogie on repeat. I mean, what fresh hell is that? I’d sooner listen to a drill-bit sloughing through my ear-drum.
It doesn’t help that nobody else can drive as well as I can. Naturally, I’m a patient, caring driver who lets people in and merges in turn. My hands wave politely even if my lips drip with malice. Everyone else pushes in. Everyone else spends entirely too much time worrying my back bumper. Everyone else does that annoying thing of slamming on the brakes if they see someone backing off their drive 312 miles away. Everyone else has garish cars and rubbish haircuts and annoying music and morning-coffee-breath and stupid bumper stickers and ugly children in the back seat. In an ideal world everyone would be forced to stay at home until I’ve arrived at work and only then could they push out onto the road, on the strict instruction that they have to be back at home and quietly watching Tipping Point by 4pm. That’ll teach ’em.
I take some consolation in the fact that I can look around in the luxurious forty minutes I spend stuck in traffic and see that everyone else has a face like a smacked arse too. Perhaps I’m not alone. Perhaps there are others – perhaps there is hope.
Anyway, as it happens, I was slightly more buoyant than normal this morning because I was wearing this fruity number to the office:
If that doesn’t leave you moister than an oyster, then I don’t know what will. It’s OK: I know I look silly. I look like John Goodman roleplaying as Jon Snow. Like a silverback gorilla caught in the process of mauling Brendan from Coach Trip. To be quite honest, it’s the type of coat I imagine our Fearless Leader might wear, pockets stuffed with half-smoked John Player Superkings and badly torn Bella coupons. My entrance into the office was well-received; me dropping it off poorly wrapped for return at the post office with a plaintive cry of ‘can I borrow some parcel tape’ less so.
As it happens, I only managed three hours at work before the darkness set in and I asked to take a half day’s holiday. This was granted and so it happens that I ended up at my parents. I can’t relax there: every proffered cup of tea is usually followed by eighty-seven questions about setting up iCloud, how does the Internet work and why my mum can’t connect the kettle up to the Wifi. I don’t think I’ve ever visited their house without having to reset at least four passwords. I’m painting them as technological luddites which is actually terribly unfair – my mother has just managed to keep her Tamagotchi alive for a three day streak and my dad has totally mastered Windows 98.
As a total aside, if you’ve ever wondered where I get my bawdy sense of humour from, it’s totally my parents. Whilst raiding through the cupboards in the utility room to see what would look better in my house, I spotted that my mother had scrawled ‘boobies’ on the calendar, accompanied with a 🙁 face. That was enough to set off my hypochondria/filial love/avarice and I demanded to know how long she had left and whether she’d arranged a will. Turns out it was just for a perfectly routine mammogram. Well, that was my mistake, calling it ‘routine’. You have to understand that my knowledge of boobs extends to twiddling Paul’s nipples like I’m trying to get the shipping forecast to bellow from his arse. She was very quick to put me right that it isn’t routine at all and that it actually bloody hurts having your boob squashed between two plates like someone plastering a ceiling. Then came the killer line:
“I wouldn’t mind, but after they’ve finished I could post my tits through a letterbox”
Ha. There’s an image that I could have certainly done without, although it did remind me to get the bacon out of the freezer when I got home.
The recipe then! We’re trying to cut our carbs down – no particular reason other than it makes us bloat like a beachbound whale – hence the lack of bun. If you’re dribbling and twitching at the thought of a bunless burger, just use your healthy extra B bun and shut up. For the love of God, don’t do what I’ve seen other people doing and sandwich your burger in between two halves of a jacket potato. If you think that is anything other than an abomination then I invite you to look at your life and think hard about who hurt you so badly.
to make goats cheese burger you will need:
- 400g lean beef mince
- 120g soft goats cheese (4x HeA)
- 1 red onion
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- mixed salad leaves (whatever you like – we used rocket)
- pinch of salt and pepper
to make goats cheese burger you should:
- mix the mince together with the salt and pepper and divide into four
- roll each ball into a burger shape – it doesn’t have to be anything fancy!
- next, cook the burgers however you like. We used our OptiGrill so we could get them perfect and rare, but you can do it however you like – under a medium-high grill or in a frying pan, or on a George Foreman grill or whatever. They won’t take that long
- whilst they’re cooking, add the onion to a small saucepan with just a wee bit of oil, and sauté over a medium-high heat until just starting to brown
- add the red wine vinegar right at the end and give a good stir
- serve the burger on top of the sliced onion, and top with a 30g slice of goats cheese (each)
to make courgette chips you will need
- 1 or 2 big courgettes
- 50g flour (4.5 syns)
- 60g parmesan (2x HeA) (use one of these to make it go further and use less!)
- 1 egg, beaten
- ½ tsp onion granules
- ½ garlic salt
to make courgette chips you should:
- line a baking sheet with baking paper and preheat the oven to 200°c
- slice the ends off the courgette, and then slice lengthways
- discard the seeded bit in the middle
- slice again until you get 2-3″ long chips
- mix together the flour, parmesan, onion granules and garlic salt and tip into a shallow dish
- tip the egg into another dish
- gently roll the chips in the flour mix, then the egg, and then the flour again (tip: it helps to hold them by the ends of the chip so you don’t rub off the coating) and spray with a fine mist of oil
- place onto the baking sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes
That fruity looking sauce is some really nice Tomato and Basil Quark from Tesco mixed in with a splash of milk to loosen it a bit. It’s lovely!
Looking for more burger ideas? Don’t worry. We’ve got loads!
- grilled harissa chicken summer burgers (0-3 syns)
- chicken cordon bleu burgers (0.5 syns)
- the beast burger (5 syns)
- reuben burger (syn free)
- the girthburger (1 syn)
Enjoy!
J