Some homework December '11

Forgot all about this cheeky wee scamp. Knocked it together over Christmas but only found the snaps again now. No great revelations here, aside perhaps  from the wildly unseaonal application of avocado, but hey, it's only air miles and the exploitation of the the third world by multinational corporations on my behalf, right?
So we're looking at beef and fried onion burgers, cheap cheese, double (annoyingly tasteless) tomato, sliced avocado and a couple of rashers of extra crispy smoked streaky bacon. Should have been pancetta but given the onion-y tang of the burgers it probably would have been a waste.  Fell to pieces instantly of course - I'll one day corral a room full of mathematicians and physicists to calculate for me the optimum height-to-width ratio of a burger, but I still haven't got the grant through yet - but the composite parts were very respectable indeed.

If this burger was a show on Discovery Shed it would be: This Old House but not the good series when they did the harbour side house in Boston or the converted firehouse, just the okay series when they refitted the New Orleans street post-Katrina. 

Not practical.

So let's just look at this shall we? Good solid burger, looks like a burger and not something perceived to be rugged or God forbid, organic, which is actually just a big broken roof tile of mince fried until its taken on the characteristics of a fossil. This looks like someone has taken the time there. There's that almost viscous melted cheese dripping over the edges, hey, there's even the dubious promise of some kind of life-sustaining nutrients with that lettuce peeking out. But this is a question of scale. Twice. Firstly there's that bun. That's the kind of bun that gives you a thirsty feeling before you even bit in. You know before you even bite into this that its gonna be really cotton woolly and dry. It was. That was forgivable (almost). The 'fries' however are a different matter. Now I'm all for innovation and I know these look groovy and impress your chef mates when your all sitting round your regular table supping obscure oversized bottled beers after hard day at the fryer but they have to taste good too. These, you may not be overly shocked to hear were still hard in the middle and no combination of twice frying, blanching or just general poncing about will change that fact. Its not the Six Million Dollar Man its a potato. Make it into a bundle of lava-hot, super crispy fries; even some kind of elaborate baked dish where you might enlist the help of a grater, ricer or even a piping bag, I'll try it. Or if you're feeling a bit Ferran Adrià, maybe devise a jaunty pub game that involves a teetering tower of potato hunks that you have to remove and throw away because they're inedible. Let's just be thankful for the onion rings, sulking at the back safe in the knowledge they're the real highlight. But we all know onion rings, like poppadoms and spring rolls are only ever the brides made, never the bride in these kind of situations. Upstaged by their starchy brethren time and time again, today was their moment in the spotlight. Messy, unhealthy, stinky, crunchy. Perfect. From the jaws of defeat comes slim victory.

Rating:

If this meal was a book you were recommended by a pretentious new age-y girl at a student house party but weren't arsed to even pick up until you got stranded in that airport after that Greek beach holiday 12 years later it would be: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.