Thursday 19 April 2007

Recipe: Veal Burgers with Wine & Tomato Sauce


For Two

Ingredients: 450g minced Veal; 2 Salad Onions; 1 small Red Pepper; 60g Butter; 2 tablespoons Olive Oil; 1 Egg; Salt & Pepper; half a cup of freshly grated Parmesan; 3 tablespoons of Plain Flour; half a glass of White Wine or Vermouth; 300g chopped Tomato (tinned).

Method:

1. Finely dice the Onion and Pepper. Melt half the Butter in a frying pan and gently saute the Pepper and Onion for ten minutes or so until soft.

2. Combine Veal, Egg, Parmesan and seasoning, add the sauteed Onion and Pepper and mix all together thoroughly. Divide the mixture into four, then make each piece firstly into a ball, then flatten to make a patty shape. Flour each patty on both sides.

3. Heat the Oil in a large frying pan along with the remaining Butter. Over high heat, brown each patty on both sides to caramelise the surface thoroughly, then reduce the heat to medium and cook for approximately ten minutes until cooked through. Turn the burgers frequently in the course of cooking - inevitably, pieces will fall off the burgers as you turn them; this is fine, as the pieces will subsequently be incorporated into the sauce.

4. When you judge the burgers are almost done, pour into the pan the wine/vermouth and tomatoes. Turn the burgers in this mixture a couple of times, than remove them to serving plates, while you turn the heat under the pan to high and cook the sauce for a couple of minutes further to reduce and thicken it. As it cooks, stir well, scraping into the sauce the cooking juices from the burgers which have stuck to the pan. Spoon over and around the burgers and serve.

These are equally good served cold with a salad for lunch on the following day. Additionally, if you want to omit the tomatoes (as happens in this household, where the Technical Department has recently developed a prejudice against cooked tomato) it works just as well to make the sauce with only the wine and the pan juices.

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