Tuesday November 6th 2018

Serving suggestion (to be ignored)

Well that's supper made for tomorrow. I'm no chef, but having lived on my own it was either cook or starve. Thus armed with the Sarah Brown cookbook, I set forth and taught myself. Most have been edible, some less than Michelin starred in quality.  But that said, I do like throwing myself into the kitchen and experimenting. I'm not interested in slavishly following recipes. My way of cooking is to open a bottle of beer, stare into the cupboards and then work out what to make. And so it happened tonight. Behold the now infamous Wessex Reiver burger. For those of you who want the recipe (you mad fools) here we go.

PREPARATION:

• Open bottle of Butcombe Beer. Drink. Open second bottle for cooking.
• Peer into fridge and remove onion, slightly overripe carrot, part used. And cheese
• Peer into rotunda and remove tin of chick peas, red lentils and bag of walnuts. 
• Peer info freezer and remove bag of frozen peas.
• Quantities of ingredients, sort of a handful.

MADNESS OF THE METHODOLOGY:

• Switch on food processor.
• Bung onion, carrot, walnuts, peas, chick peas and lentils into processor and pulse
• Remove all the contents and repair the food processor...repeat frequently
• Once contents is mashed, sorry, roughly chopped, lob it into a pan with some oil and cup full of beer.
• Cook in pan, turning frequently to avoid burning (I forgot to do that drinking the remaining beer while watching Fifth Gear on the TV)
• Season to taste - I used salt, black pepper and cumin. No idea how much.
• Eventually it'll sort of be cooked/gone black and then add the cheese, fine grated. Fold in the cheese into the mixture.
• Leave to cool in fridge (burger mixture, not the chef)
• Once solid and immovable (burger mixture, not the chef), place on a board and using a burger maker press out the burgers and place onto a well buttered tray (which I had to do after the burgers were in there as I forgot so a lot of fiddling happened)
• Cover with clingfilm (burgers, not the chef) and stand well back - drink more beer, and following this creative endeavour you will be too exhausted to do washing up, so leave until the morning. 

COOKING:

• Now this is where I may come unstuck. Oven, fry or grill? I have absolutely no idea, but think I'll do half an hour in a low oven, say 240oC and maybe grill to finish the cremation. Serve with a take-away.

Wish me luck, if this blog suddenly stops after this posting, you'll know why.