It used to be the case that I was in the minority; my obsession with burgers and their buns has been a long time raging. Now every London blogger, their partner, pet and best mate seems to be fixated on them. My main issue was always the bun, which was what led me to arrange The Great Bun Tasting and to make several batches of these.  They are pretty much the ideal bun – a slightly sweet brioche with a structure that is light yet robust enough to last without turning to mush.

The problem with burgers in London is that decent ones are so few and far between that when we do actually find one, everyone gets worked up to the extent that the hype exceeds reality. It’s like playing a favourite song to death; it becomes so familiar that you almost have to try harder to enjoy it. The Hawksmoor burger is a perfect example.

In America though, they do things differently; we are teased with stories of delicious burgers on every other block. The interesting thing though is that while they are generally regarded with appropriate respect, most seem completely unpretentious. Fast food; high quality; grabbed and gobbled. American burgers is a subject I spend quite a bit of time reading about but sadly, I’ve not yet had a chance to visit for real. My excitement at discovering The Meatwagon then, in an industrial estate on my very own home turf of Peckham, was off the scale and then some. It was there that I tasted my first Bobcat Burger; I’ve craved another ever since. My love affair with Hamburger America had begun.

Then I got my hands on this book by George Motz and, as if that wasn’t good enough, it came with a DVD which is, quite simply, brilliant. Motz basically journeyed across America in search of the best burger joints (100 made the final cut) and the result is a charming record of the daily lives of each joint, the history, the customers and of course, the burgers – some of which are simply outrageous.

The film opens for example with ‘Dyer’s Restaurant’ where, “it’s all about the grease” – deep fried burgers. Super thin patties are plunged into NINETY ONE YEAR OLD oil until cooked and then lifted out and squeezed, an oleaginous waterfall gushing forth. The grease is apparently ’strained and processed’ every day but seriously, that fat has never been changed. Dyer’s consider this their selling point though and when they moved premises, the oil moved to the new location accompanied by a police escort and TV crew. Not joking.

Twenty minutes in and I was worried; a steamed burger with steamed cheese came next, followed by the peanut butter burger and then the plain old butter burger, which in case you are wondering is simply piled, piled with what I would estimate to be at least 5 or 6 tablespoons of butter. Amongst the extreme though there are the sublime and by the end of the film I was salivating.

The Bobcat Bite (New Mexico) is owned by John and Bonnie Eckre (above), who are very proud of their Green Chilli Cheeseburger. People actually come in coachloads to visit the place and often end up with a lengthy wait due to the limited seating capacity; Bonnie describes how customers have been known to wait for an hour outside without a grumble. The burgers are worth it.

The Bobcat is this: prime beef topped with chillies fried in butter; sinful juices seep through the meat. Cheese is then melted on top of the chillies, sealing the spicy layer. A sprinkle of their ‘famous’ tangy slaw provides crunch and contrast. When I found the recipe for Bobcat slaw in Hamburger America there was no stopping me; I made buns, the slaw and some patties from ground beef shoulder. Mild Turkish chillies were fried in butter, piled high and sealed with a cheesy vacuum. That cat was finally mine.

Some burger recommendations that will come as no surprise: if you live in London and you are not suffering from burger fatigue, I recommend you visit The Meat Wagon. It goes without saying that Hamburger America should also go on the wish list. While you are waiting for those things to happen, why not try the recipe/s below and inject a little New Mexican love into your boiger? It’s a taste sensation and no mistakin’.

Bobcat Burgers (from Bobcat Bite, New Mexico)

Ground beef shoulder, for making the patties, or ground beef of your choice. You want a good bit of fat in there basically. I wanted to experiment with a mixture of cuts but didn’t have time
Mild green chillies (or hot, up to you), sliced
Butter and a touch of oil, for frying
Cheese slice of your choice

I use this recipe for the buns – it’s the best I’ve come across

Bobcat Bite Slaw (from Hamburger America)
This is a half quantity. Double this apparently keeps the Bobcat Bite going for 1 day. It is best the day after it has been made.

1 small head white cabbage, core removed and finely shredded
1/2 large green bell pepper, grated
110g caster sugar (yep, really)
235ml white vinegar (trust me)
60ml flavourless oil, such as groundnut
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon celery seeds
1 tablespoon mustard

Mix it all together. Keep in the fridge and give it a good stir before serving.

Assembly

Toast your buns. Gently fry your chillies in a healthy amount of butter (20g or so) and begin frying your burgers. I use a cast iron pan for this – if you have a proper hot plate then use that – I am jealous. When you flip the burger, it’s time to put those chillies on followed by the cheese. Once the cheese has melted you are good to go. Get that burger in that bun. Top with slaw (and anything else you fancy) and serve.

Too cold for a BBQ you say? Pah! Never. Well, not yet anyway. There’s nothing like flinging a few good things on a hot Weber to chase away the winter blues, and good things were in abundance as we chowed our way through these enormous steaks, some spectacular sausages, a smoky baba ganoush, a rack of sticky jerk ribs and my contribution: Thai style stuffed squids.

When researching the recipe I discovered that stuffing squid with pork mince is actually a Vietnamese preparation but I had some galangal, coriander and lime leaves hanging around so Thai-style it was. To lighten the stuffing I also added breadcrumbs soaked in milk (as you would for an Italian meatball), which might seem a bit odd but was designed to avoid ending up with an overly heavy and coarse mixture, what with it being a BBQ and therefore an exercise in maximising stomach capacity. I actually added a bit too much in the end which I thought made it overly loose but everyone else told me to stop fretting and rein in the pedantry.

The most important thing to bear in mind when preparing your squid is that one should not over-stuff. The squid shrinks when cooking and if you’ve too much pig jammed in, then there can only be one result and that is a big porky mess. I’d pre-cooked the filling so we simply rubbed with oil, seasoned and grilled until golden on each side; just enough time for the filling to heat through and the squid to stay delightfully bouncy and toothsome. The tentacles were also given the appropriate amount of respect; we saw no better way to treat them than seasoning highly and draping across the searing hot grill until the suckers were curled and crispy-tipped.

At 7pm, when two layers of clothing were no longer enough to keep out the chill and the wind kept blowing out the candles, we admitted defeat and retired to the sofas for cheese, gin and a bit of inebriated shouting at the telly. Winter BBQ’s rock.

Thai-style Stuffed Squid

6 squid (on the small side of medium), cleaned
350g minced pork
2 tablespoons fish sauce (plus more to taste)
2 fat spring onions (green parts only), finely sliced
1 teaspoon sugar
2 crushed garlic cloves,grated
1/2 inch piece galangal, grated
4 lime leaves, finely chopped
2 Thai chillies, finely chopped
1 small handful coriander leaves, finely chopped
2-3 sliced of white bread (crusts removed), soaked in enough milk to make it into a mush when mashed with a fork
Black pepper
Juice of 1 lime (plus another to adjust to taste)

Cocktail sticks, for sealing

First make the filling. Mix the pork mince with all the ingredients except the fish sauce, lime juice and coriander. Add this mixture to a pan over a fairly gentle heat and stir every now and then until cooked through. Remove from the heat and allow to cool completely if you will not be cooking the squids right away.

Ensure that each squid is sealed at the thin, pointy end as they can sometimes have a hole. If this is the case, secure with a cocktail stick before stuffing each with the pork mixture. Take care not to overstuff the squids as they will shrink during cooking. Secure the end with another cocktail stick.

To cook the squid, rub each with oil and season lightly then grill until golden on each side.

These koftas have saved me on more than one occasion – the kind of occasion where Chris casually mentions that 6 people are coming over for a feed in half an hour and won’t it be OK if we just buy some sausages? I can never just buy some sausages. These koftas take ten minutes to prep and you can vary the spices so people don’t notice they’ve had them two last minute dinners running (also great on the BBQ). My basic recipe is this: 500g lamb mince, 1/2 red onion (softened in olive oil), 1 fat clove garlic (crushed and and added to onions for last 30 seconds), 1 teaspoon ground cumin, 2 teaspoons ground coriander,* 1-2 red chillies (chopped) and seasoning; just mix everything together well with your hands, mould around skewers then grill. I vary them by adding chopped herbs like mint, parsley or coriander; spices like fennel, cardamom, ground cloves, cinnamon or nutmeg and some lemon or orange zest. The list goes on. Chuck it in and see what happens I say.

I usually serve them up in flatbreads with a tzatziki style sauce but the sight of a few red peppers threatening to wither and a bag of walnuts led me onto muhammara sauce; a thick slurry of pulsed nuts, smoky roasted sweet pepper, pomegranate molasses and breadcrumbs. The only slightly time consuming bit of making this sauce is roasting the peppers so I speed things up by just sitting them directly on the gas flame – just remember to turn them every so often and don’t be alarmed by the spitting and crackling. Also make sure to use something like tongs to pick them up, they will be super hot. My muhammara always comes out paler than others I’ve seen, which I think might be down to the traditional inclusion of aleppo pepper in the recipe; I just used two red chillies from my balcony…

For a bit of substance I also made a tabbouleh: parsley (about 80g as it should be the main ingredient), cooked bulgur wheat (about 50g, although I used barley cous cous this time), 6 chopped cherry tomatoes, 4 sliced spring onions (green parts only), a small handful of mint leaves, a crushed garlic clove, lemon juice, 4 tablespoons olive oil and seasoning. It was delicious but we ended up chucking the whole lot in flatbreads anyway for some carb on carb action. Sometimes it just has to be done.

Muhammara

4 red peppers – roast them until the skins are blackened then place in a bowl and cover with clingfilm. Leave for 10 minutes. The skins should now be easy to remove. Chop roughly, discarding the seeds.
4 tbsp olive oil
70g walnuts
2 red chillies, roughly chopped (seeds or not, up to you)
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted until fragrant in a dry pan and then ground to paste using a grinder or pestle and mortar
50g white breadcrumbs blended to a paste with about 1 tbsp cold water
2 tbsp pomegranate molasses
1 clove garlic, crushed
salt and pepper
A few mint leaves, shredded, for garnish (optional)

Put the peppers, walnuts, breadcrumb paste, chillies, cumin, pomegranate molasses and garlic in a blender and blend to a paste. Remove from the blender and mix in the olive oil then taste and add seasoning. Sprinkle the mint leaves over the top and serve.

* using whole cumin and coriander seeds, briefly toasted in a dry pan until aromatic and then ground in a spice grinder or pestle will give you a better flavour but ready ground is fine too.

I am obsessed with anchovies. I know that some people can’t stand the intense salty, fishy flavour but that it precisely the reason I love them so. I can do a whole tin in one sitting spread onto hot buttered toast – often I’ll do a soft boiled egg to dip the salty soldiers into. This is possibly my favourite snack and one which I’m very tempted to bust out at our next Guilty Pleasures Dinner Party.

The dinner is supposed to be a place to share culinary creations you shouldn’t really enjoy but you do and I pondered the eligibility of my egg and soldier offering. I mean, many people already love anchovies, right? Think Rowley Leigh’s parmesan custard with anchovy toasts, think lamb studded with rosemary and anchovies, think Worcestershire Sauce, Gentleman’s Relish, Caesar salad, fish sauce, bagna cauda…I could go on.

And then I realised, anchovies are a very guilty pleasure indeed, because we shouldn’t really be eating them at all. Stocks of the salty suckers are dwindling and I for one am gutted. I’m probably single handedly responsible for tipping the balance into the red. Well, me and Rowley Leigh who quite rightly laments that there is no substitute.

So, I’m trying to cut down (a little bit) – I’m taking things one week at a time. Can’t people just start breeding them or something? Crikey, I’m tempted to set up some sort of operation on my balcony just to keep a personal supply going. I thought I might have made the whole thing worse by using tuna in this dish too but that’s OK as long as it’s not Bigeye, Northern Bluefin, Pacific Bluefin or Southern Bluefin, apparently. Phew.

I’d like to say I’ll be able to stop eating anchovies but I’m not quite sure I can make that promise. I mean, I have an addiction, I can’t just go cold turkey – I’ll need professional help.

Grilled Radicchio, Fennel and Tuna with Spicy Anchovy Dressing (serves 2, generously)

1/2 head radicchio
1 bulb fennel
1 tuna steak
1 tin cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (or soak your own)

For the dressing

1 large red chilli, de-seeded or not (up to you) and chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 handful mint leaves, chopped
Juice of 1/2 large lemon plus an extra squeeze to finish
6 anchovy fillets (more or less depending on taste)
Black pepper
Pinch of sugar
Oil (I used rapeseed)

- To make the dressing either whack the garlic, chilli, mint, anchovies, sugar and black pepper in a blender or pound in a pestle and mortar (my preference) until you have a mushy paste. Add the lemon juice and about 4 tablespoons of oil and mix thoroughly to emulsify. Adjust the quantities as necessary. If your dressing is too tart or you feel like it is punching you in the mouth, add another pinch of sugar.
- Remove any tired outer leaves from the radicchio then cut lengthways through the core and then do the same again so that you have four wedges. Cut the fennel lengthways through the core into slices, taking care to remove any tough bits of core but leaving enough so that it stays together in slices.
- Brush the wedges of radicchio and fennel with some of the dressing, reserving a teaspoon for the beans and some for drizzling at the end. Then grill them either on a hot griddle or the BBQ.
- Rub the tuna steak with oil and season. Grill for 1 minute each side then set aside on a warm plate while you assemble the salad.
- Arrange the fennel and radicchio slices on plates. Mix 1 teaspoon of the dressing with the beans and scatter over. Slice the tuna across the grain and arrange on the plate before drizzling over some of the remaining dressing and adding a final squeeze of lemon juice.

I am addicted to eating fruit in savoury dishes at the moment so when Chris brought home some baby bass he had spotted going cheap at the end of the day, I immediately looked for a fruity accompaniment. I had a pineapple patiently waiting to meet its fate and decided to give it a good grilling on the BBQ and then use it in a tropical, chilli spiked salsa.

I rarely cook by any method other than BBQ in the ’summer’ and so needed a way of protecting the bass on the grill. The huge bunches of banana leaves decorating many of the shops in Peckham Rye seemed just the ticket – a bit more exciting than foil anyway.

When I went down to buy some they were nearly all gone and it dawned on me how these shops work; they receive huge gluts of produce, which can sometimes be sold out the same day and not seen again for weeks. When the fresh callaloo comes in, which is exactly what had happened on banana leaf day, bunches are stacked into towering piles on every corner of every stall, around which throngs of people are jostling, rifling and grabbing for the best bunch. It’s usually all gone in the space of a day.

I snagged my banana leaves unscathed and looked to ingredients for the salsa – finely chopped red onion, chilli, coriander and mint to mix with the grilled pineapple. It’s my favourite fruit to BBQ by a mile – either brushed with chilli-lime syrup or ginger or straight up savoury like this, I just love slapping fat slices on the grill. Juicy, sweet, charred and fragrant.

The banana leaves worked a treat too – the bass steamed perfectly inside, stuffed with lime, slivers of scotch bonnet, ginger and herbs, releasing a poof of fragrant steam when unwrapped. Only thing is, now I have a load of leftover banana leaves – those things are pretty massive and I’ve about eight of them – any ideas for other uses?

BBQ Bass in Banana Leaves with Grilled Pineapple Salsa

2 sea bass or other white fish suitable for stuffing and steaming
2 banana leaves
Skewers or cocktail sticks to seal the leaves (soaked for 20 minutes in cold water)
4 slices lime + extra juice of 1 lime
4 slices ginger
Handful coriander
Handful mint
4 slivers scotch bonnet or other chilli (use more or less depending on the heat of the chilli)
Oil
Salt and pepper

For the salsa

1 pineapple, cut into thick slices
Small handful coriander leaves picked and roughly chopped
Small handful mint leaves finely shredded
1 small red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped
Juice of 1 lime
1/2 medium red onion, finely chopped
Black pepper

- Light the BBQ. When hot add the pineapple slices until charred in places on both sides.
- Open out a banana leaf and oil the part which will come into contact with the fish. Stuff the belly of the fish with 2 ginger slices, 2 lime slices and half the herbs and chilli. Squeeze a bit of lime juice in and season all over. Wrap the leaf up as best you can to contain the fish and secure with skewers or sticks. Repeat with the second fish and put on the BBQ, lid on. The cooking time will depend on the size of your fish. I cooked mine for about 20 minutes.
- While the fish is cooking, dice the pineapple and mix with the other ingredients.
- Serve fish with salsa and enjoy!