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.

FACT.

I was more excited about this sandwich than I was about the dish that made it happen – chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. That’s the kind of tunnel vision you find yourself dealing with when you’re a sandwich obsessive; always focused on where the next fix is coming from. It wasn’t just the leftover chicken that got me thinking so much as all that remaining oil – 200ml of the stuff. It struck me that this precious garlic, herb and chicken infused oil would make possibly the best garlicky mayonnaise I’d ever tasted. It did.

I’ve never mixed mayonnaise so carefully, such was the strength of my opinion that this oil was the most exquisite leftover to pass my way in a very long time. The result was a wobbly pot of  yellow goo which had ’stick me in your face or stick your face in me right now’ written all over it. I mixed it with chunks of the leftover white and dark chicken meat and of course, lots of crispy skin bits.

It was time for The Build. This starts with the best bread you can find – I chose a classic white bloomer from the German bakery Luca’s in East Dulwich. It ain’t cheap but the bread is worth it; dense crumb, real flavour, perfect crust. Chicken-mayo mix heaps generously on one side of the sandwich and I smeared a few of those sweet roasted cloves onto the other.

With richness of course must come balance and the bitter leaves of a curly endive mixed with lemon juice and generous amounts of salt and pepper did the job perfectly.

All that could be heard for a full five minutes was chewing, interspersed by me spluttering, “best…chomp chomp…chicken…chomp…sandwich” – pieces of stray endive dropping on to my top and blobs of mayonnaise on my chin. It wasn’t pretty; I was out of control. Such is the power of a good sandwich.

My Ultimate Chicken Sandwich

First, you need to improve your quality of life considerably by treating yourself to this dish. Then you’re set to take the highway straight to leftover heaven central.

First, make your mayo. Put two large egg yolks in a clean bowl and whisk them together. Begin adding the oil a few drops at a time, whisking as you do so and making sure each bit of oil is fully incorporated before adding the next. As you whisk more oil in and the mayo starts to thicken, you can start adding the oil in slightly larger quantities until you are steadily adding it in a thin stream. The key with mayo is to be cautious with the oil until you get a feel for making it. If you add too much at once, it will split. If this happens, don’t despair. Take a fresh egg yolk in a clean bowl and begin adding the split mixture into it, very slowly, just as if it were the oil. This should bring it back.

Stop when the mayo reaches the desired thickness. Add lemon juice and seasoning to taste.

(This, by the way, is why I didn’t use extra fruity olive oil when I made my chicken, as the flavour would have been too strong for the mayo. The leftover oil is also great for roasting vegetables – particularly broccoli, and in salad dressings).

Mix the mayo with your leftover meat and heap onto one piece of bread. Spread some leftover garlic cloves on the other piece. Add some curly endive or other bitter salad leaves mixed with a generous amount of lemon juice and seasoning. Sandwich together. Eat and forget your troubles ever existed.

You know by now I have a  ‘healthy’ (bordering on obsessive) appreciation for sandwiches. I find it so satisfying to sink my teeth into a slice of crusty, fresh bread which yields to layer on layer of textures and flavours; it is a perfect self contained meal. Earlier this year I began to blog about sandwiches I’ve found around London but for some reason this slipped and I’ve now got a backlog. Here’s a little round-up, just to get us back on track.

First up, a London classic: the chorizo roll from the Brindisa grill at Borough Market. A ciabatta roll is stuffed with either a single or double portion of Alejandro Barbacoa chorizo (obviously I had the double) plus roasted Navarrico piquillo peppers and a good handful of rocket (£4.50 ish?) A drizzle of olive oil is all it needs in the way of lubrication as all the beautiful spicy fat from the sausage seeps into the bread, coating everything with its smoky, paprika flavour. This sandwich is intense and addictive, which is why the queue more often than not snakes right back into the market. The picture below represents a rare moment of quiet at the grill; when they are moving at full pace it is quite a spectacle of sizzle and smoke.

Next, a sandwich from my favourite local bakery, Luca’s. This is not one of their greatest creations unfortunately and would have been more enjoyable toasted. I mean, look at the size of that bread! Tim Hayward would hate this sandwich. The filling of brie and pesto was, as ever, fresh and high quality; the brie was ripe and pongy and the pesto tasted home made (it cost around £3).  Despite some ongoing problems with slow service, the staff are charming and endearingly ditsy and the baked goods are a cut above the norm. They also do cheese and charcuterie plates, an absolutely triumphant rye bread, preserves, biscuits and cakes.

There are a couple of irritating things about Luca’s though – one being the fact that their coffee is a bit watery (according to trusted sources) and the other that, as with most places in East Dulwich, you have to have a high tolerance for the presence of small children; this means lots of noise, mess and rows of increasingly alien looking pushchairs. I am practically immune to this now. If you can’t bear the thought however, I’ve recently heard from the charming Rosie Lovell that her deli (Rosie’s Cafe Deli in Brixton) will soon be stocking Luca’s bread and they will also be selling their goods at Brixton Farmers’ Market in the near future.

Next, another Borough Market offering: the salt beef from Roast to Go, which is one of those places I’ve always meant to visit but never felt particularly inspired by. To be honest, this wasn’t a particularly remarkable example of the classic. To me, thick hunks of meltingly tender brisket should be bursting out of the bread; this was just a bit rubbery and meagre in size and the miserly stripe of mustard down the middle wasn’t enough to invoke even a mild case of ‘mustard nose’. Pickles were present and correct but it pales in comparison to a classic salt beef from Bagel Bake on Brick Lane, which costs around £3 I think in comparison to Roast’s version for a fiver. The bread was sweet and soft though, almost bagel-like in chewyness. I think they could be onto something there…

Finally, a sanger from an Italian deli and restaurant called Tentazioni that Chris discovered down in Shad Thames. The deli seemed well stocked although I do have to question their choice of location. Are they really going to drum up enough business tucked down one of those dark side streets otherwise filled with estate agents and over-priced, under-sized apartments? It’s a shame really because the lady inside was very charming and keen to help, even if she did work at the most incredibly slow pace. As the place is not geared mainly towards making sandwiches, it was a bit difficult to see what was on offer and a language barrier issue meant we just had to point at a few things and hope for the best. We got some fennel and pepper salami and parmesan with cracked black pepper and salad. The ingredients inside were delicious but the sandwich on the whole, a little dry and bready.

That said, the place is definitely worth checking out. I spied some gorgeous looking (if ridiculously expensive) smoked mozzarella along with Sicilian fennel sausages, pastries, a range of Italian cheeses and meats and also dried products like good quality pulses. You can see more pictures in my Flickr sandwich set here.

So there we have it, a few sandwiches to digest while I search out the next victim. Londoners, I call out for your assistance in directing me to the best sandwiches in the city. Share your favourites please!

FYI: Jonathan also writes a great series on sandwiches in London: ‘The Sandwichist‘

In case you didn’t know, I’ve got a whole lot of love for the sandwiches. I’ve never been able to decide on my favourite but in truth, this must be it because I eat this sandwich every single Saturday morning. Yep. Sad, I know. Ladies and gentlemen, behold the BLAT. Bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato atop a healthy dollop of mayo on thick sliced white. Sometimes I’ll vary the bread – crazy, I know. Exciting times.

The bun obsession was still in full swing last week and I started to experiment at home. The winner on flavour for me at the great bun tasting, was the brioche; almost perfect but letting itself down a little on structure. I wanted to kick things off using a tried and tested recipe which could then be modified afterwards, if necessary and I remembered saving this from Deb’s blog, which is usually very reliable when it comes to all things baked.

As Deb warns, the dough is incredibly sticky but it is important to resist over-flouring when kneading as this will only toughen the buns and make them too dense. Her technique for kneading is to pick up the dough, turning it and slapping it against the work top, which worked a treat. She has also posted some bread making tips, which I found incredibly useful.

The seeding here is a bit random as I forgot to buy sesame seeds and so had to scrabble around in the bottom of a packet of ’seed mix’ I found languishing at the back of the cupboard. As you can see, I couldn’t be bothered to weed out the hemp seeds so they went on too. The odd cheeky sunflower also slipped through the net – it wasn’t an issue.

The buns turned out light, soft and neither too buttery nor too sweet. I thought they might benefit from being slightly denser but Chris disagreed and with hindsight, I think he’s probably right. I considered making another batch with slightly more flour just to see what happens but to be honest, I feel the bun obsession is finally coming to an end – it’s time to move on. Once toasted, I think this is actually as near to a perfect burger bun as it’s possible to get. The taste was spot on and they hold up well under the pressure of a greedy filling. Now all I have to do is start working on the perfect burger…