Home Made Focaccia and Spicy Lamb Burgers with Sweet Potato Chips

Spicy Lamb Burger in Home Made Focaccia, with Sweet Potato Chips, Mediterranean Salad and Home Made Coleslaw

Welcome to my 100th blog entry.

I'm going back a few weeks with this one, or I should say a couple of months, I have a bit of a backlog of things to tell you about!

Last year I found myself watching Saturday Kitchen and Richard Bertinet was on there making Focaccia. It was great to watch him making the wet dough into an amazing flat loaf of loveliness, I saw it being made again later in the year on the Great British Bake Off, with Paul Hollywood explaining how the dough needed to be nice and wet, the contestants couldn't get their heads around quite how wet it needed to be and half of them didn't use all the water they had been given.

Back to the present and I had a bee in my bonnet. I was remembering a meal I'd had in the Hutt, a lamb burger in a delicious flat bread, served with salad and crunchy sweet potato chips and I had a hankering to reproduce it.

First, I considered the bread. Although The Hutt menu described it as a flat bread it was more like an Italian bread panini type square bread. I scoured the recipe books and the supermarket shelves but couldn't see anything that came close. I went back to the recipe books and decided to try "Focaccia Classica Al Rosmarino" from my new Gino D'Acampo book "Italian Home Baking".

Focaccia

First brush a baking tray and the inside of a large bowl with olive oil.

Get a large mixing bowl and sift in 500g strong plain flour. Stir in 7g fast-action yeast. Make a hole in the middle of the flour and pour in 3 tablespoons of olive oil and 300ml of warm water. Add 2 teaspoons of fine salt and then mix well with a wooden spoon until all the ingredients are well combined.

Tip the dough onto a very lightly floured board/surface and knead for 10 minutes. I always set a timer for this, even though I know I am looking for a smooth, elastic dough, I find I feel like the 10 minutes is up much sooner than it really is, so the timer gives me a good guide.

Although I've previously seen this dough be really runny (as described above), this dough should be very soft but not wet.

Form the dough into a domed shape and place it in the oiled bowl, brush the top of the dough with more oil, cover with cling film and leave in a warm, draught free space for about an hour, until it's doubled in size.

Slide the dough from the bowl onto the baking tray and use your finger tips to spread it out into a 3cm thick oval shape (or 2cm rectangle as I made), the dough should be covered in indentations. Brush it with oil, cover with cling film and leave somewhere warm for 40 minutes until doubled in size.

Meanwhile preheat the oven to GM7/220C and place a try of hot water on the bottom shelf of your oven.

When the dough has risen, use your fingers to make more indentations, sprinkle with some sprigs of rosemary and sea salt and drizzle with 3 tablespoons of olive oil.

Place the tray with the dough on the middle shelf (above the shelf with the water) and bake for about 20 minutes until the bread is golden all over (mine only took 15 minutes).

Allow to cool a little on a wire rack before serving warm.

Spicy Lamb Burgers, Sweet Potato Chips and Salad

While the bread was rising I set to work on the other elements.

Peeled and sliced some sweet potatoes. I blanched them in hot oil until they were cooked. Then set aside. At the last minute before serving the meal, I reheated the oil until a crust of bread would brown quickly and then fried the chips until golden and crisp.


I made a salad of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, olives, feta and anchovies - a Mediterranean salad of sorts.

I also made a coleslaw of finely sliced red onion, finely sliced carrot sticks and shredded cabbage, mixed together with light mayonnaise. 


Finally I made the lamb burgers. I had 300g of lean lamb mince (although I would recommend not using lean for this, the fattier mince has much more taste), I mixed in a handful of breadcrumbs (use really good quality bread to make your crumbs), some chopped fresh coriander and red chilli and a teaspoon each of ground coriander and ground cumin. Seasoned with salt and pepper. You can add some egg to help bind them. Use any flavouring you like - basil, oregano, paprika, a bit of red onion, some ground fresh garlic. When you have the combination of flavourings you prefer, wet your hands and form the lamb into the required number of patties, flatten slightly and fry in hot oil for about 8 minutes on each size, just make sure they are cooked through before serving. If you want something different you can add in some little cubes of feta to the mince mixture before making the patties.


I made up the burgers and served with the chips on the plate and let everyone help themselves to the salad.

I was disappointed with the burgers, as I mentioned I wouldn't use lean mince if I made them again, compared to the normal lamb mince I've used it had very little flavour, it didn't have a good texture either, it was too soft, the flavourings were great though and we all loved the focaccia, I couldn't believe how well it turned out, because the dough hadn't been as runny as I'd expected I thought it would be dry and sawdusty, but it was soft and full of olive and rosemary flavour, with a lovely crunch from the sea salt, it was the star of the show. The sweet potato chips were tasty, sweet and chewy, with only a little crunch. I'm not sure if the crunch is dependant on the sweetness of the potato, these were very sweet, which may have made them more chewy...when I've had them out they been crispier, or maybe it's down to the oil you use. The salads were good, it was a nice change to have home made coleslaw, so much bite and texture compared to the factory produced versions.


Overall it was a tasty meal, reminiscent of the meal I'd had at the Hutt but with room for improvement.