Pork Burgers with herby wedges (the potato ones)

My turn to host the after-school hordes today (it seems to come round very quickly), made even more logistically tricky because the girls don’t have choir at the moment, but the boys still have football, so I need to do a double run up to school at 3.30 then 4.30. I was already in a rush because I’d been working at a friend’s house due to lack of internet chez Recipe Junkie and had stopped in at home on the way up to school to dump my laptop and collect all the stuff that needed to go to the charity shop after my clear out on Saturday. 

Having collected the girls, I had a couple of jobs to do in the village before coming home to start tea, and then head back out for the boys. The boys have Cubs at 6.30 so there is a certain time pressure on tea on these evenings.

As I turned the corner into our road, I saw someone loitering outside the house and clocked the BT van parked opposite. In the manner of some slow motion film character, desperate to prevent disaster happening, I started madly waving my arms and picked up speed, as the girls scattered behind me, all the while hoping that he would see me and would not just get in his van and drive off leaving me forlorn and desolate on the doorstep as the rain became heavier –you’ve seen the films.

Lady luck was clearly smiling on me and he waited. We exchanged pleasantries about 3 legged pets – his cat to my dog – and then he set about checking the main socket. Apparently the exchange fault had been fixed but a test showed something else was not right. 

There is probably a secret box on the fault report form that says “Stupid Woman”. I had plugged the router back in incorrectly after all my efforts to get online on Thursday. I am still consoling myself with the fact that there was a genuine exchange fault that hadn’t been fixed till this afternoon...

Anyway, having recovered my composure, I rounded the girls back up and we headed back up to school – this time in the camper van – to collect the boys. Back home and my initial euphoria with the return of the internet quickly wore thin when it appeared NOT to have been returned. For a short and critical period of time, I was trying to get the tea ready and work out why the hell the internet was not working again - majoring more, I must admit, on the internet.

Good job then that I’d already started the tea.

This is a fabulous and easy meal and I thoroughly recommend it. It could have gone either way and nearly did when Pink discovered her first wobbly tooth on biting into the sweetcorn “How exciting – a wobbly tooth!” (she’s been desperate for one for months) “But mmmmuuuummmyyyy (sob, sob) it huuurrrrttttss”. However, tooth drama aside, I’m pleased to report success.

The recipe is based on a Good Food one from July 2009 – the original recipe is here, but is adapted significantly to meet the criteria required for Blue’s homework this week to design a healthy but delicious meal. Don't you love it when they spring things like that one you? I think I he did very well. And all 4 of the kids wolfed these burgers down, no questions asked, along with the salad, then fruit and cranberry and white chocolate blondie (watch this space) for pud. All in time for Cubs.

Pork Burgers with herby wedges

Makes 6 decent sized burgers

Ingredients: 750g lean pork mince, 1 large egg, 4 cloves of garlic (3 for the burgers, 1 for the chips), 2 tsp smoked paprika (I just used bog-standard, but you could use hot if you were catering for more sophisticated palates than I was), 1 slice of bread, 6 burger rolls, 4 baking potatoes, fresh rosemary, 1 tablespoon olive oil.

To serve: mayonnaise, ketchup, lettuce, tomatoes, red peppers etc

Method: To make the burgers, put the mince, egg, 3 of the garlic cloves, crushed, the paprika and the bread into a bowl and mash together with a fork. You could make the bread into crumbs first, but if you mash it in to the rest of the ingredients, and then mix it up well, you get the same effect. If you already had bread crumbs, you could use those.

Once everything is well mixed, divide the mixture into 6 and form into burger patties. I made the burgers this morning - It took minutes - and left them covered, in the fridge.

About 45 minutes before you want to eat, heat the oven to 220⁰C, pour half the olive oil onto a baking sheet and put it in the oven. Slice the baking potatoes into wedges, finely chop the rosemary and mix together the potato wedges, chopped rosemary, remaining crushed clove of garlic and the rest of the olive oil. When the oven is at temperature, spread the wedges over the baking sheet, sprinkle with some sea salt if you have some, and return to the oven. I got the potatoes in before I had to go back up to school for the boys.

Check the wedges after about 20 minutes, and turn. They will need about 45 minutes in total.

Turn the grill on to high and when hot, start grilling the burgers. They will need a good 10 mins on each side – check if you’re not sure.

When the burgers are cooked through, serve in the buns dressed to taste (mayo or ketchup – or both, lettuce, sliced tomato) with the wedges on the side. 

check out the size of those leaves...

I made a tomato salad to go with ours to celebrate a particularly fine pot of basil that the Husband has nurtured for me (sliced 6 tomatoes, ripped up a handful of basil leaves, and drizzled over a little balsamic, and a grind of salt and pepper), some sliced red pepper and some corn on the cob that needed eating (not good for wobbly teeth).