Coriander burgers with tomato salsa

What with bouncing baby Maddie, tons of work and attempting to move house, blogging time is scarce right now.  However, the fabulous barbeque season is upon us.  All to often, the British barbeque comprises of burnt, cheap sausages, frozen burgers and that incredible bread favoured by the likes of the high-street burger chains - how do they manufacture bread with absolutely no flavour and the texture of cotton wool?
For me, the biggest problem with barbeques is in trying to do too much - it's much better (as with all these things) to try to do one thing well, rather than half a dozen badly.  Chicken wings and legs often burn on the outside and are raw in the middle.  Overly fatty sausages carbonise and end-up looking like fossilised poo.  My personal favourites, however, are a whole leg of lamb, butterflied and rubbed with chilli, cumin, coriander and garlic, roasted in a medium oven for half an hour then chucked onto a hot barbie to seal and take in all those smoky flavours, or my famous coriander burgers.
The burgers are Spud's favourite, so for the inaugural barbeque of 2006, that's what we had.

Burgers
8-10oz good quality British steak - rump or sirloin for preference
1 shallot finely sliced
salt & pepper
1 egg
1/2 handful fresh white breadcrumbs
Coriander seed, roughly ground - lots of it - you'll need 6 tablespoons or more

Salsa
10-20 cherry tomatoes roughly chopped
1 red chilli finely chopped (more or less to taste)
2 spring onions sliced or 1/2 red onion finely sliced
Handful coriander leaves roughly chopped
1/2 red pepper finely diced
Juice of 1 lime

Bun
Good quality bread required here - ciabatta or sourdough are ideal - you need something robust
Handful of rocket leaves

Here's how it works:
Remove the fat from the steak and put to on side.  With a very sharp knife, chop the steak as small as you can get it - 5mm dice or smaller.  You could mince the steak if you have a mincing machine, but it doesn't take that long with the knife really. Don't - whatever you do - stick it in a blender - you'll end-up with quite the wrong texture and the burgers will be too dense.
Chop some of the fat from the beef finer still - we're looking for a few teaspoons of fat diced so fine it almost looks whole again.  Mix this into the steak.  The fat is important, as it helps internally baste the meat keeping it lovely and moist.
Mix in the breadcrumbs, the shallot, plenty of salt and pepper and finally the beaten egg.

Roughly crush the coriander seeds - ground coriander from a jar won't work here.  While it sounds a lot of coriander which could be pretty expensive, try buying it from an Asian store (coriander is used extensively in Indian and Pakistani cooking as well as that of the Middle East, and North Africa - it grows practically anywhere and has been used in Britain since the Roman invasion) - you'll find bags of coriander seed much more cheaply than in the supermarkets.

With your hands, form the steak into patties - a couple of ounces each (any bigger than this and you'll have problems turning them) and roll them in the coriander making sure they're covered on both sides.  Place on greaseproof paper and put in the fridge to firm-up a bit.

Make the salsa by simply mixing all the ingredients together and setting to one side for up to an hour (giving the flavours a chance to get to know each other).

Once your BBQ has reached that optimum temperature (white coals), place a piece of foil over the rack and pierce as many times as you can.  Oil the foil.  Once the foil is hot, put the burgers on.  The point of this is that these little puppies are pretty fragile until they're half cooked and you'll have a devil of a job turning them if you put them straight on the grill.
Turn them after a few minutes to cook through a little on the other side.  When you're happy that they're a little more robust, you can remove the foil and place them directly on the grill.

Serve in the bread with the salsa and some rocket leaves.  Then look into the neighbours garden where they're eating salmonella-wings and coal-flavoured sausages and toast them with a nice glass of pinot noir.  

tags: beef  barbeque  

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