Black Bean Beef Burgers …

… Noodles and Pickle Salad

This was another meal where I had the away disadvantage.  But I was cooking at Tom and Hannah’s house again, and they have a well set up kitchen and so there didn’t seem to be too much of a disadvantage.  I brought my own food processor.  There was lots of things to slice tonight. 

I was cooking before my midweek church home group again.  This time I was cooking for Tom, Ed and Hannah.  Maisie, Tom’s daughter, was there but she had already been fed. I suspect these will be the friends I will cook for most often as my life intersects with theirs more than others.  Hannah bought me some basil infused olive oil as a thank you for cooking for her, which was very kind. 

There was a mini disaster at the beginning because I had forgot to bring the ginger with me.  Cooking was delayed until some more was purchased.  It felt like there was a lot to do with this meal.  After the burgers were made there was lots of slicing to be done.  This wasn’t a hard meal to cook but the slicing, stirring, tearing and turning was constant. 

In the end I was 30 seconds over the fifteen minute mark.  I suspect I could have done it in the fifteen minutes if I had the recipe entirely in my head because I did have to refer back to the book quite a few times.  But even then I think this would still be a close one. 

The noodles and pickle were great and really tasty.  They could have made a meal just in themselves.  In fact there was enough left over for a fifth portion.  The burgers were nice, if a slightly odd accompaniment to an Asian dish.  The burgers I cooked tasted great, but three of the four fell apart quite a bit and looked substantially less good than the ones in the book.  Oh well!

By the way it is typical that when I called into the supermarket on my way over to Tom’s the fish counter have large (jumbo in fact) raw shell-on king prawns.  The very ones I needed for the meal I cooked last night.  They would have looked great along side the prawn cocktail. 

It’s Glazed Pork Fillet from page 90 tonight.  

How much: £7.39.

How long: Fifteen minutes and thirty seconds.

Who with: Tom, Ed, Hannah.