When Boyfriend came back from a three-week trip to China last week, I wanted to impress him with my new-found culinary skills. I’m not normally known for domestic goddessness, but while he was away, to prove I was capable of cooking more than super noodles, I had been practising. A weekly delivery from Hello Fresh helped, but that’s definitely still cooking.
On his first night back, I decided to cook lamb and feta burgers, with oregano potato wedges, courtesy of McCain. Nothing impresses a boy more, so I’m told, than a home-made burger.* If you’d like to woo a boy of your own, here’s what you need:
For the burgers:
- 500g lean lamb mince
- 1 garlic clove, peeled and finely chopped
- ¼ tsp ground paprika
- 1 tsp ground allspice
- ¼ tsp cumin powder
- 3-4 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, freshly chopped
- Grated zest of 1 lemon
- 100g feta cheese, roughly crumbled
- Salt and pepper to season
To go with your burgers:
- ¼ cucumber, peeled and sliced
- 1 small red onion, peeled and finely chopped
- 6 olives, sliced
For the oregano wedges:
- 300g McCain Sea Salt & Cracked Black Pepper Wedges
- ¼ tsp dried oregano
To serve:
- Four crusty bread rolls, halved
- Large G&T for the chef to help recover from stress of smoke alarm going off three times
I’m not going to bother with a ‘how to make’ section, as it’s so easy – mix all the burger ingredients together into burger shapes, sprinkle the wedges with oregano and stick in the oven as instructed, and that’s it really. The recipe card suggested the grill or a barbecue for the burgers, and as it was pissing down with rain, I went for the grill. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bit of a design flaw with our grill**, and after about ten minutes, the house was full of quite an acrid black smoke, and flames were flickering out from the oven.
When Boyfriend came down from the shower to ask why the attic floor was full of smoke, I decided to transfer the burgers to a frying pan, to reduce the risk of the fire brigade being called by a helpful neighbour, and that worked very well.
All in all, a very tasty dinner, despite me cooking it, although I’m not sure I made quite the impression I was hoping for, jumping up and down waving a tea towel under the smoke alarm.
*And taking your clothes off obviously. Do that bit later though – you don’t want to get splashed with burger fat.
**Definitely the grill’s fault, and not mine.
My grill used to do that too – it was an electric one in the top of the oven, I think fat got stuck behind it during a particularly livley potato roasting exercise. Mighty tricky to clean that type of grill. I found the best solution was to stop using it.
Younger lambs are smaller and more tender. Mutton is meat from a sheep over two years old, and has less tender flesh. In general, the darker the colour, the older the animal. Baby lamb meat will be pale pink, while regular lamb is pinkish-red.”-“‘
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