Inspired by one my favourite music blogs The Power of Independent Trucking I post a link to this - 40 or so minutes of chat from the stage between Fugazi and their audiences (something I am privileged to say I was part of on several occasions). A recording that shows my unrelenting nerdiness when it comes to heavy, guitar-driven music from America's underground but also how blindingly stupid people can be when put in the concert situation. Also, it shows Fugazi up to be the funny, insightful, erudite and occasionally bad tempered chaps the are (were). I guess I would be too I suppose if I had to put up with drunk arseholes shouting abuse at me as I did my job.
My first attempt at properly spicing up my burger patties wasn't quite as full on expected. I blended beef with Schwartz bbq seasoning (which is basically paprika, salt and garlic powder) grated parmesan and chopped chipotle chiles in adobo sauce. Note: these sweet hot peppers are about 3 inches long and come doused in a smoky, seriously ballsy tomato sauce and help make my bastard huevos rancheros a proper weekend at Bernies. Although to be fair, you could stick these bad boys in pretty much anything and it would improve it (I know, I've tried). Anyway, I digress...
My first schoolboy error with the burgers was I should removed the seeds and chopped the pepper way finer. I wanted to get that amazing deep, smoky flavour and sweet tang that chipotles have but it didn't quite come through as much or as consistently as I'd hoped. The principle was right, but the proportions and texture were totally wrong.
Also, finding the right complementary fittings for something fiery like this is always tricky. The compulsion would be to top with sour cream or fruit for balance but the ice cream or bananas I had to hand weren't really gonna cut it so I improvised a little.
A first attempt at construction included a fried egg and some amazing Mrs Renfro's corn salsa (again, a genius Lupe Pintos purchase) but that was total overkill. Something of a revelation for me as 'too much' of anything isn't something I am familiar with when it comes to food. A second take was stripped back to mayo, lettuce, tomato, fried red onions, shaved parmesan and a generous dash of frank's hot sauce. The latter was unnecessary, as the onions were really sweet and were the dominant flavour - the parmesan was a pleasant surprise a salty treat and not cloying. For my next attempt at this I'll go further down the Tex/Mex route, maybe monkey around with adding other dry spices to the patty and different cheese. More research required. Back to Lupe's methinks...
If this burger was a wedding it would be: the one someone told me about recently where someone threw the bride - dress and all - into the hotel pool during the reception. Once you get over the initial shock you're left with something thats a bit messy and could end up in a trip to casualty.
I finally got a copy of Faith by The Cure on CD. This replaces the copy on cassette which was taped from the vinyl borrowed from Glenburn Public Library (no sorry, home taping wasn't killing music). I listened to it again in it's entirety - it's one of those records that sounds better in one sitting - as I drove on a dark, cold, quiet morning. Within seconds I was 19 again and trudging through snow on my commute to Springburn College, a time when this album was one of a Stereo One carrier bag full of records that provided a soundtrack to my first sashays into a post-high school world.
More than a few years on, not much has changed. It is still a breathtaking record that leaves me wide eyed and shivery. The music is as simple and ingenious as I remember. Lyrically, as a 19 year-old listening to what was (at time of recording) a 22 year-old's bookish, overwrought world view it sounded unflinching, brave and stark. Today, with nearly 20 years of something resembling perspective, the brutality is tempered by the sadness - and I realise it isn't quite the indulgence to revel in pop record sadness as it used to be either. That doesn't make Faith any less rewarding a listen, it just means your skin is a little thicker in some places and thinner in others. I spent a lot of my youth wrestling with The Cure's substantial musical cache but always came back to this record for a peculiar kind of comfort. I think I subconsciously avoided buying this record as I think I wanted to preserve it they way I enjoyed it back then. I needn't have worried.
I was not at this gig as I was only 11. Billy Sloan was. How nice for him. And us.
A covert gathering of sophisticated burger lovers? Sounds promising. www.burgherburger.co.uk. I'll keep you posted. Logo by a lovely lady called Carol Soutar. I met her once.
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.
Given Iggy's fondness for hawking car insurance (from a company that wouldn't insure a self-employed musician friend of mine ) me paraphrasing the Stooges when talking about McDonald's isn't such heresy these days.
So this is the 1955 burger, based on the original recipe for the first ever Maccy D burger. Now I have no problem sucking at the corporate teat like some mindless drone, especially if I get a burger at the end of it, but even this left me pathetically pawing like some drugged Russian circus bear in search of some scraps of dignity, duped into thinking something special was afoot when all I got was a disappointing lunch. Or declawed and shipped around the world to be gawped at by curious humans.
The restaurant's periodic specials are clearly targeted at those poor sap dads (in my limited experience, women are rarely taken in by such elementary smoke and mirrors) trundling through the drive-thru for a clutch of happy toys (ie. me). As if life isn't complicated enough, they distract with continued, seemingly 'limited' burger variations, poking an onion ring or bacon rasher under the hood like some saturated fat-soaked supercharger ready to propel your regular burger 'n' woolly bunage into some culinary interstellar overdrive.
Now, I've been busy this week with learning things and a lovely man pointed out that this is actually called marketing (thanks Matt) and this 'old is the new new' idea might not be the spirited trip down memory lane it might first appear. For me at least, given my lack of being born in 1955.
Biting into the 1955 burger confirms this, it is in fact something of a Frankenstein's burger, a quarter pounder with all the jokes taken out - what has ketchup ever done to you, you brazen condiment exclusionists? We get treated to a parp of their Big Mac sauce instead. The result is a trembling wilt of goop, too much pattie flop and no fun-in-the-bun extras (vegetables weren't invented until the 60s clearly) to distract or even just crunch. Bear in mind this is coming from someone who could happily enjoy the belt-fed wombat treatment on their cheeseburgers on any given Sunday.
I feel duped. I'm vulnerable when I visit you McDonald's. Please don't take my inability to say 'yes, one with nuggets and milk' while driving at 4 mph and pulling wallet out of my back pocket as a sign that I want an inferior greasy lunch. I want a fun greasy lunch and may resist feeling 'special' in future. I still ate it of course, but only so there was less to tidy up later in the back of the car.
If this burger was a form of transport it would be: a rail replacement bus service.
Thanks to Dawid for this one. Pushing the limits of international burger relations. I've given you very much the highlights' here. Its not massively gory, just not very appetising to western palettes perhaps. Bet it tastes like chicken.
Take a look at this Polish website for the full photo story.
