Random Recipe Challenge ~ Botham Burgers

Firstly I feel I need to apologise for my lack of blogging lately.  Not only has finding the time to post my antics hard to come by, but visiting blogs and catching up on all the gossip with my friends has also been difficult.  Sorry!  To add insult to injury, blogger is just not playing fair and has thrown a complete tantrum over photos which is why they have been few and far between on the posts I have completed!!  My picasa work around is quickly wearing thin too as I am now nearing the full storage limit and the increase the limit means handing over cold hard cash!  And now my email has decided to join the club too ...

Pressing on to more important matters, the time is drawing near to get my post completed for Dom's Random Recipe challenge this month, which he very cleverly decided should come from the first cookbook that started all our collections off.  I decided to settle on the first cookbook I got in the UK ... if I went for the proper first cookbook I would have had to ask my Mum to send it over, a classy kids book with cartoon pictures of a cat and a dog let loose in the kitchen complete with chef's hats!  Can't seem to recall any of the recipes!

So, the first cookbook in my UK collection came courtesy of my big brother.  It was part of a birthday gift I received in my first year in the UK and contained a lovely hat, scarf and glove set from Accessorise (which I still use by the way!  My big brother knows me so well!) and a copy of Jamie Oliver's new book "The Return Of The Naked Chef".  To this day I still don't know what on earth possessed him to buy me a cookbook, my love of food didn't develop for another few years but clearly he knew something I didn't.

Following along with the 'what on earth possessed' theme was the choice of recipe from the book for the challenge.  The day after the challenge was set Hubby and I were talking about having a barbie, Hubby was lamenting his recent love lose of the classic burger just as I should flick to the page with the Botham Burger ... I'm pretty sure you can guess the rest!

Jamie Oliver's Botham Burger
1kg minced beef, preferably organic
2 medium red onions, finely chopped
2 eggs
1-2 handfuls of fresh breadcrumbs
1 tbsp coriander seeds, crushed
1 small pinch cumin seeds, crushed
1 heaped tsp dijon mustard
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 230C.  Mix and scrunch all the ingredients together.  Use the breadcrumbs as required to bind the mixture.  Divide into 4, then gently and lightly mould and pack each burger together into a smallish cricket ball sized shapes.  Place in the oven and roast for 25 mins, which should leave the middle slightly pink and the outsides nice and crispy.  Serve with regular burger style sides!

Makes 4
Jamie Oliver's 'The Return Of The Naked Chef'

The above is how Jamie makes them.  I make them pretty much the same, apart from the burgers are flattened to ensure even cooking (Hubby doesn't like pink in his meat!) and we cook them on the barbie for roughly the same amount of time.  I have now made this recipe twice more, Hubby is totally addicted and last weekend we took them along to a barbie with friends and everyone raved about them, so there is some strong testimony from some finicky eaters!  The biggest thumbs up seems to come from the 'Chilli-Cheese' Burger, where these are cooked with a healthy layer of homemade hot chilli sauce and topped with slices of cheese which are then left on the barbie (with the hood down!) to molten lava stage.