I’m not a great fan
of minced pork, or even of burgers, so you can imagine how surprised I am to
say I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday’s meal.
I’m back to doing a
bit of using up from the freezer. Minced pork was top of the list – don’t ask
me how it got there but there it was. A quick shufti through my cookbooks gave
me the idea of doing “Burgers with a sweetcorn relish”. I thought the relish
should give a bit of flavour to the insipid pork. The Fox suggested we bought
some buns but I thought I’d use up some pitta bread from the freezer, another
thing I’m not keen on.
The Fox got the meat
out Friday evening ready to thaw for the morning. First thing I did in the
morning was to make the burgers. I added plenty of thyme & parsley to give
it some flavour. I put the burgers in the fridge ready to cook up in the evening.
Nearer midday I was
in the kitchen & thought I might as well get out the tin of sweetcorn from
the cupboard. I knew I didn’t have any mexicorn as the recipe required but I
had thought of a way around that. However, no sweetcorn. I emptied the shelf. Still
no tin.
It’s a problem I
find with the two of us cooking now. I always worked on the basis of buying the
ingredients I needed for the week ahead, even if there was some in anyway. That
way I never had to check what was in the cupboard unless I was doing, as
yesterday, a use-up meal. The Fox works on a different theory. Always have some
basic ingredients in, which you top up when you use the last one up. I’ve been
trying to adapt to this principle but I keep finding I use the ingredient I
bought for the planned meal & don’t bother to check whether it’s the last
tin. Meanwhile the Fox has used the cupboard tin, seen another in which I then
used & which was by then the last tin. As I don’t check I don’t bother
putting it on the shopping list to replace.
Anyhow, now I was
stuck. I’d made the burgers up so the meat couldn’t be used for any other
purpose. After some thought I decided to fry up some extra capsicum peppers –
that was how I was going to make the sweetcorn into mexicorn – then add the
other relish ingredients.
The burgers, well
coated with the relish, then popped into the toasted pitta bread. Brilliant. I’m
not sure it wasn’t better than the original recipe. The meat was moist &
flavoursome. The bite of the relish added much to it. Even the pitta bread was
welcome & not the usual bit of cardboard I associate it with.
I remember once
staying in a chamber d’hôte once near Rouen.
The meal we had was excellent. Our hostess commented that the recipe for a
smoked chicken & mushroom dish her husband made was originally the result
of a culinary mishap. They’d enjoyed it so much, they made the mishap from then
on. I feel just like that over this sweetcorn relish without the sweetcorn.
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