The Burger Barbeque

It's funny. Whenever I hear the word "barbeque", I think of chicken wings marinated in soy sauce, processed hotdogs and crabsticks, squid with sambal and the all time The clichés. Chris had a grand idea of just having burgers for a barbeque. And it did sound good. After all, I really really dislike grilled and then microwaved burgers from fast food joints. It's such a lie! Most places promise flame grilled burger patties, but at a certain fast food joint, I opened my patty just to see if they really were flame grilled. Well, yes and no. The sides were charred, evidence that it had actually been on a grill, but the middle part of the patty had air bubbles, that were popped. This definitely isn't a hand made patty, I thought, and it sure looked like it was nuked. Why would there be popped air bubbles? I'm sure it was. It's fast food. Anyway, I shouldn't complain too much. I can't expect much from a fast food chain.

Moving on from bad food experiences, Chris had a plan, and we finally put it into motion.
It was suppose to be a fairly stress free event, but poor planning led to a rather hectic evening. But it was all good. Being the food snob that I am, and I apologize to anyone who has put up with it, I insisted on hand-cut fries, home-made burger buns and of course, hand made patties.
Chris and I spent the entire day before shopping for ingredients at tekka market and Carrefour. I absolutely love tekka market and I highly reccomend it. Anyway, we got a styrofoam box from one of the stalls and I went to get it washed while chris was arranging for space in his car. A lady at the seafood section of the market was kind enough to hose it down for me. I had my entire right arm hosed down in the process, and she was apologizing profusely. I could only laugh at what happened and went on down to the carpark. Chris found it funny too.

All loaded up at tekka market

We spent the evening making the beef patties, and I started on the burger bun recipe that I've never tried before. It was going well until I got impatient, and decided to bake the buns, without letting it proof for a longer time, and what we got was a bun that was inbetween light and dense. Not quite what we wanted, and I figured I ought to let it proof even longer the next day. We decided on having the burgers for dinner and to test them at the same time.

Halving the burgers!

I was really happy about the buns though. I found out that I could roll two rolls at the same time, using both left and right hands.
The night carried on over to Jeremy's and we ended up with 54, 140g patties and a very hungry husky at our sides the entire time. It was meant for about 16 peope, and clearly, we've bought too much. We spent more time just talking and I went to bed only at 6am because of the delicious hazelnut coffee I had over at Jeremy's.
Waking up two hours later, I started on the burger buns, shaping them two at a time with my new found confidence in bread making. In between a now longer proofing time, I made a Spicy tomato sauce, blue cheese mayonaise and spear mint syrup. Music practice came and went for me, and we spent more time buying stuff for the barbeque, and then Charles and I went on to Jeremy's and started peeling and cutting the potatoes in to random stick sizes.

Everything else kind of came together, and everyone finally came and it all just happened.
It was so hectic. All that hard work. All that time spent. Sleeping only 2 hours. Was it worth it? Sure it was.

Julian and Jeremy

Charles, Jeremy and Chris

The burger

Nothing beats a hand made burger. I must say, the fruits of your labour, is very satisfying.
We did make too much patties, and so the burger barbeque carried on over to two more days. Having burgers three days in a row did it for me, and I haven't had one since.
I am craving for one now though. I'm keen on trying the Wagyu beef burger with Foie Gras and truffle at One Ninety. Mmmmmm.

Oh, I was away in Indonesia for the past week, and I didn't get a chance at all to post this entry before leaving. Thus the absence.
Look out for the next post on Indonesia!