Saturday, December 11, 2010

The Tale of the Burger, The Salad and the Curse of the Coffee

Cooking with meat freaks me out a little. So much depends on the quality of the meat that its always a gamble. We have a really good mutton guy, his meat is pretty good most of the time. Good beef on the other hand, is really difficult to find.

Farhad is eternally in search of the perfect steak and hamburger. Indigo Cafe does a very good version of both, but the pocket is considerably lighter after a meal there. The last time i made a roast beef ( which was a HUGE disaster. Im still recovering from that day) - i had to sear the fillets on the pan before putting it into the oven. Well. We ran out of gas midway through the searing. We tried changing the cylinders but we couldnt figure out how. After many panic calls it was done, but the beef was already ruined. I dumped it into the fridge and we ordered pizza. The next day at lunch i decided to brave the beef once again and managed to turn it into pretty good roast beef sandwiches!

I decided to face my fears and make an hamburger. It's easier than steak, thats for sure. You can pass off with the meat being 'okay'. So i took the plunge and bought the meat (i took no chances and bought it from 'Sante' in Bandra: my current favorite place) parmesan and parsley.

I have to say, it did turn out really well. It also helped me get over my fear of meat just a little bit. haha.



As the meat defrosted, i put together all the ingredients that the recipe called for.



The meat was mixed with chopped parsley, some parmesan (which later we figured was completely lost in the burger) browned onions, salt, pepper an egg and 4 slices of bread that farhad blitzed earlier.


I shaped it into burger patties of about 3/4 of an inch thick and put it into the fridge for about 45 mins.
Apparently it stops them from collapsing when you put it on the pan.


The trick with making the burger juicy is to cook it for 3/4 mins on each side, on a REALLY hot pan.


I chopped up some gherkins, onions and rocket leaves and toasted the bread in the oven. With a layer of mayonnaise (we had wasabi mayo at home, but normal works fine too) and some wholegrain mustard. It worked out rather well i have to say!



While the patties were chilling in the fridge, i decided to make some tomato and mozzarella salad. This was super easy and fast to do. The texture of mozzarella, the tomato and the tanginess go really well together.






So that was dinner.

Now for a little back story. Poo has just come back from Dubai (where she was filming for 2 months) and i had invited her for dinner the next day. We decided to repeat the tiramisu that i had made a couple of weeks ago for dessert since it was a huge hit. The thing with the tiramisu is that its simple, but it requires planning and you need to make it the day before its actually meant to be eaten. The last time i had made it (again for a bunch of friends that had come for dinner) i had forgotten one of the KEY ingredients. The Coffee. We rushed to Coffee Day and bought some sub-standard coffee. We tried it and  it was really bad. Alok came and saved the night(it was 12:00am) with some coorgi coffee and the tiramisu was made.

So here Vipul Uncle's Tiramisu Recipe.Hopefully the curse of the coffee wont follow!

The recipe calls for  250 gms of mascarpone cheese (i would really recommend the imported one. I used the indian one this time and it lost the lightness) 4 eggs (yolks and whites separated), some good strong espresso (you really need to taste the coffee when you make it, because bad coffee can completely ruin your tiramisu), cointreau (if you have any. Again maybe any other nice liquer would work - but it gives it a lovely taste) and sponge fingers.  So with all of these ingredients set, i set out to make the tiramisu.

This time though, we were so over confident about having fantastic coffee, that we put it on the stove and completely forgot about it.

The coffee got burnt. Believe me, it does. It had this distinctive burnt taste and it was even more bitter than coffee usually is. We only discovered this after the eggs had been beaten so we had to rush to make the coffee again before the egg whites fell. Anyway. Getting back to the recipe.

Once the coffee is made, i added a little bit of cointreau to it ( this depends on how much of the liquer taste you like -- its a fine balance as it shouldnt drown the taste of the coffee completely).

Next, I put the mascarpone into a big bowl and beat it creamy with the electric beater (Thank God for those things!)


Then i added the egg yolks and some sugar to it, and beat it some more.



I like to add a little bit of vanilla essence when im beating eggs for a dessert. It just takes away the possible eggy smell that could sometimes kill a perfectly good dessert. Once this was done, i whisked the egg whites until they formed peaks.



Then i folded in the egg whites with the egg yolks.


The last time i made it, i had made it with double the quantity so i made two layers of sponge fingers. Here i put a base layer of the egg and cheese mixture and then put the sponge fingers dipped in the coffee cointreau concoction on top.




Then i covered it with another layer of the egg and cheese mixture, and dusted some cocoa on the top.


Tada! 

I went to bed exhausted, but happy. 

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