I've been waiting a lifetime to get back down

Some of you might remember the halloumi and sweet potato burgers I posted about a few weeks ago thanks to the incredible burger book I got as a birthday present. I continued my string of burger nights with a slightly more traditional offering this time around (I say this time around but it was actually nearly a week ago now... time is whizzing by too quickly for my liking at the moment!). 

My guest for last week's burger night was the lovely Charlie who is a little bit of a cheese fiend. I'm less of a cheeseaholic in that I'm not particularly adventurous and like to keep a safe distance from stinkier, mouldier varieties but I have a SERIOUS weak spot when it comes to real gooey, stringy, melted goodness. And so, combining Charlie's enthusiasm for cheese and my peculiar fascination with food that creates a bit of a Lady and the Tramp situation between me and my meal (some may say I've crossed a relationship boundary with food right there...) I decided I had no choice but to try out the cheese stuffed burgers from my bible burger book. 

Incredibly messy but pretty damn amazing. Who'd have thought that something as simple as adding a big chunk of cheese to the middle of a burger patty would be such genius. 

Cheese Stuffed Burgers
Makes 2

325g beef mince
2 fairly thick slices of cheese halved
seasoning (I tend to use a tiny bit of salt, a helluva lot of pepper and a few chilli flakes just to make things interesting)
one small onion (fried)
salad
bread rolls (I bought those cheese-topped ones just in case our cheese quota was running a bit low...)
extra cheese for grating if you are that way inclined

Put the beef in a bowl with the seasoning and bind together to form four equal patties (about 1cm thick). 

Stack the squares of sliced cheese on top of two of your patties, then place the remaining patties on top of these and fairly press the edges together to stop the cheese from oozing out all over your oven. This would mean less cheese oozing out of your burger and into your mouth, and that's not a good thing.

Place the burgers underneath the grill and cook for about 6/7 minutes on each side. 

Meanwhile, fry your onions and prepare the salad to go inside the burger buns. 

Serve and enjoy with homemade potato wedges. Or if you forgot to make your wedges like I did, a bag of cheap tortilla chips to accompany your meal works surprisingly well too. Top quality hosting right there. 

Incredibly messy but pretty damn amazing. Who'd have thought that something as simple as adding a big chunk of cheese to the middle of a burger patty would be such complete and utter genius?!

Trust Me... I'm a genius- The Family Rain

And I'll never look back, just hold your head up

Last night I had two of my friends over for a night of burgers and brownies. Quite frankly, I'm not sure there's a better way to spend a Monday evening. Or any evening for that matter.

I got this recipe book for my birthday and I literally spend whole evenings gazing longingly (and dribbling a little) at the arghsoincrediblyyummy looking pictures and recipes, so I've been dying to get stuck in and actually make something from the book. I started in quite an odd place for a burger recipe book, going for one of the few veggie offerings instead of a real, meatilicious burger. I blame the halloumi for sucking me in, its just too tasty not to be eaten at every possible moment. 

Needless to say, the halloumi didn't let me down, the burgers tasted INCREDIBLE (even if they did look a bit like fancy baby food in a bun). And since the book was such a success with the first recipe I tried, I'm going to have to make burger night a regular occurrence. 

And just because I'm a nice, thoughtful person, I thought I'd share the recipe for anyone else who's as enthusiastic about burgers, halloumi and sweet potato as I am. 

Sweet Potato and Halloumi Burgers

450g sweet potato
175g broccoli
3 cloves of garlic
1 red onion (finely chopped)
2 red chillis
175g halloumi (plus extra to fry for the tops of the burgers)
2 tbsp flour
Salt and Pepper
1tbsp ground coriander (the recipe said fresh coriander but I decided I wasn't buying a whole bunch just for a tbsp... ground coriander worked just as well!)

Cook the sweet potato in a saucepan until tender (about 15 mins or so should do it). Once it is cooked, drain the water and then mash. 

Meanwhile, cut the broccoli into small chunks and cook in a saucepan for about 4-5 minutes. 

In a bowl, get together the garlic, onion, chilli, cheese and seasoning then add the sweet potato and broccoli to the mixture, mixing well until all of the ingredients are incorporated with each other. 

Shape the mixture into 4-6 equally sized patties, pour the flour onto a plate/worktop and coat the burgers in the flour. Then put the burgers into the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 180C and cook the burgers for about 15-20 minutes until cooked through. Flip the burgers half way through cooking. You could grill the burgers too, I just chose to use the oven because I was making potato wedges and can't use the grill at the same time! 

If you fancy adding a bit of extra excitement to your burgers, fry more red onion in a pan along with the remaining halloumi to add to the tops of the burgers. 

And now on to the second part of my B&B night, I was sucked into the creme egg brownie club after seeing so many people posting pictures of their own versions on twitter and instagram. I already had the brownie mix I got as a birthday present which I posted about here so it seemed like the perfect excuse. Plus, creme eggs were 8 for £1 in Home Bargains so I think it was meant to be.

I haven't got a recipe as such to post since my mixture came from the jar, but I've seen plenty of posts about them including this one on Cat's blog if you want to try them yourself. Which you definitely should do RIGHT NOW. I've ended up eating a few slices this evening and they somehow taste even better cold than they did warm last night. Amazing.

Falling- Haim