Home made burgers and oven wedges

So I made this as a fairly simple but healthy supper to greet Calum when he came home from a hard day's work, being the domesticated little thing that I am. The wedges were a slightly tricky, but only in that they requiring 2 methods of cooking: parboiling and baking. Having peeled and chopped the potatoes into wedges, I parboiled them for 5 minutes then coated them in a mixture of melted butter and jerk seasoning. They were then baked for 25 minutes and came out with a lovely crisp skin and slightly floury inside. I then made a dip of maple syrup, mayonnaise and whole grain mustard to serve the wedges with, which had a slight sweetness to counteract the bite of the mustard. Once made, the dip went into the fridge to chill whilst the rest of the food was being made.

The burgers themselves were pretty easy, I just wacked mince and, chopped onions and some herbs and spices into a bowl, mixed them together, formed patties and used the George Foreman grill to cook them, thus reducing the fat content even further. I then topped them with lettuce, tomato and cucumber. Calum didn't seem so sure about the inclusion of the last salad element, but since I like the crunch I justified their use with the fact that they are basically unpickled gherkins.

Picture of the final masterpiece:

Fun with gammon

While we were at the Edinburgh Farmer's Market yesterday morning, we picked up a gammon joint from Puddledub Pork. It looked very nice, and Hattie assured me that these things are very easy to cook, really. Since to me the title "novice cook" would be one of great honour, I elected to believe her. These things are usually for the best.

As was to be expected, she was absolutely right. We first boiled the joint in a pan with bay leaves and peppercorns for about 40 minutes, about ten minutes longer than our cooking instructions (thanks, Waitrose website!) since my largest pan was not quite up to the job of submerging the last centimetre of the joint in water, no matter how much squishing we subjected it to. So the compromise made was to turn the joint regularly in the water for a little longer, and seriously consider investment in better cookware. This stage of the cooking turned the joint a healthy light pink colour, and infused it with flavour through the water.

At least, that's what I'm told.

Next we removed the skin, scored and studded the fat of the joint with cloves, and covered it generously with a light brown sugar. Studding things with cloves is something of a passion of mine, so I was more than happy to take on this part of the task. Something about almost any type of food studded with cloves has a certain charm to it, and the simple act of pushing nature's little map pins into food is the sort of mindless fun that I can do for hours. Given that I'm the slowest of slow cooks, I often come close to doing this anyway.

In any case, after this we threw the joint into the oven at a high heat (the posh supermarket's site promised an "attractive glazed finish" if we did this) for another half an hour while we knocked up some boiled Rooster potatoes and carrots, along with Harriet's lovely parsley sauce. Once all of this was ready, we pulled out the joint. It looked, and tasted, just great; the sugar-glazed, clove-infused fat was particularly delicious. Just look at it!

Stuffed peppers

Made for lunch; we decided to be brave and create our own version of tomato rice, since buying it pre-made would be a cop out. We also had to suffer the perils of cooking it in the oven, since the recipe called for a microwave. So, having created our own version, we arrived at this marvel. It's topped with goats' cheese and we substituted jalapenos for the chillies the recipe actually called for. Due to a wee miscalculation we ended up with a little too much rice, but I think the pepper looks nice nestled on a bed of it.