Masterclass - Heston Blumenthal's Hamburger, Triple Cooked Chips and someone else's Baked Alaska

Every now and then, I have the dubious honour of holding a 'Masterclass' either at our house or a friends house, where I de-camp most of our kitchen to set it up in their kitchen.  About 6 weeks ago, Sheila met up with Sarah, a good friend of ours, and between them they came up with the idea of me teaching Sarah how to make hamburger and chips.  Sounds OK, right?  Add in the fact that this is Heston Blumenthal's Hamburger and Chips and all of a sudden it becomes a little daunting!

Please be aware that this blog entry is long!  Read it in passages, re-visit it over a couple of days or gobble it all up in one go.  The cooking process for this dinner involved about 8 distinct processes and took in the region of 7 hours to complete.

So, unto the breach, as they say in the classics!

The long and short of it is that Heston's burger is made from scratch...  The roll is made from scratch, the meat patty is made from scratch, the tomato sauce is made from scratch and finally, so is the cheese slice.  The chips are triple cooked to add a little more adventure into the dish, as if it needed anymore.  I searched for a recipe on line, found one and downloaded it.  When I printed the recipe and ingredients list, using Arial 10pt, it printed across 4 pages!

The decision was made to have Baked Alaska for dessert.  Because the hamburger was all consuming and required lead times of 24 hours to make, I chose an easy, very lush sounding recipe for the dessert.  To tantalise you a little, the recipe included chocolate sauce, amaretto, chocolate brownies and lashings of ice cream. 

It all started on Friday evening when I made the pre-ferment dough for the brioche 'bread roll'.  Easy enough...  I added 200g plain flour, 1/2g fast action yeast and 200ml water into a mixer, mixed it all together into a very liquid batter then plonked it all in a bowl which I covered and left overnight on the window ledge in the kitchen.

The next day felt like a road trip.  We packed the 4 bags of groceries into the car (thanks Ocado for the Thursday night delivery), one cooler bag with the beef and ice cream plus our deep fat fryer, Kenwood Chef mixer and the mincer attachment. We also had an overnight bag, because we planned to drink a reasonable amount of wine so driving home was out.  To prove it was a road trip, we had in time honoured tradition forgotten to pack something. We had to turn back after having just left the house because Sheila had forgotten to pack her squash shoes for Sunday.  One hour later at 12pm, we were lugging all of this kit up three flights of stairs to get into Sarah's kitchen. 

First things first and we salted the 300g chuck and placed this in the fridge for 6 hours.

Next, Sarah chopped 600g Ribeye and 300g Brisket into rough chunks which we then passed through a mincer using the 3mm plate attachment.  This was passed through the mincer twice and then the meat was placed into the fridge to get as cold as possible.  I'm happy to say that Sarah had great fun with the mincer and enjoyed this new experience.

Once the meat was resting in the fridge, we moved onto the dessert as this would need sufficient time in the freezer to get nice and solid.  Sarah added 100g butter, 100g sugar and vanilla seeds to a bowl and placed this on the heat to melt the butter and combine all the flavours.  This was the first time that Sarah had worked with a vanilla pod and she found it interesting scraping out the seeds from the sliced open pod.  Once the butter had combined nicely with the sugar, 125g 70% dark chocolate was added to the mix along with 75ml water and 1 tbsp cocoa powder.  Sarah's expression of pure joy watching the chocolate melt and form a beautifully glossy sauce was something to behold!

After taking the sauce from the stove to cool, Sarah grabbed the chocolate brownies and started layering these into a bowl to create an external shell.  This is something Sarah enjoyed imensely and her puzzle solving skills came to the fore as she cut and molded the brownie into every little nook and cranny.  Once the bowl was lined with the brownie, 2 tbsp Amaretto was drizzled over the sponge to soak in.  Next, about 4 tbsp of the chocolate sauce was spooned into the bowl on top of the brownie to create a lovely rich chocolate layer above the ice cream.  Spooning in the vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice was a tad messy as we wanted it a little soft so we could mould it into the brownie shell to create two distinct layers of ice cream.  Lastly, Sarah layered the bottom of the Baked Alaska with more brownie before it was covered and placed in the freezer.

Next we moved onto stage one of the triple cooked chips.  Sarah spent a good half hour peeling potatoes and then cutting exact chip shapes, all equal width and similar lengths.

Next, the chipped potatoes went into simmering unsalted water.  It is important not to boil the water as this will damage the chips when they eventually got soft.  When the chips were cooked and a knife was inserted and slipped out easily, we removed the chips from the water, placed them neatly onto a tray and allowed them to cook before plaing them in the fridge for an hour or so.  This is to allow them to cool and dry out before cooking stage 2.

Finally time to try out the cheese and tomato sauce part of the recipe.  We halved 12 tomatoes and spooned out all the seeds and flesh and placed this lot into a wire mesh strainer.  We then spent the next 15 minutes or so pushing all the tomato through the strainer to obtain a thin tomato juice.  This juice went onto the stove and was allowed to reduce by about half.  It created a beautifully rich tomato concentrate that was enhanced with a little twist of sea salt.

The cheese proved to be tricky tricky tricky!  We brought to the boil 375ml sherry with some peppercorns, garlic cloves and fresh thyme.  Once boiling point was reached, the heat was turned off and the liquid was left to infuse for 10 minutes.  Following this, the liquid was strained to remove the garlic, peppercorns and thyme.  Now we added 12g citric acid (E330).  This might have been our first mistake.  The recipe calls for sodium citrate which is E331 but all I could find was E330.  According to the oracle (web search!) both these products are antioxidants.  The citric acid was whisked into the sherry and so far it was fine.

The problem came when we added the 450g grated gruyere cheese.  We started stirring the cheese into the sherry in small amounts, however the first handful didn't melt, so we turned the heat up.  This was probably the second and most telling mistake.  After adding another couple of handfuls of cheese, the cheese curdled...  mmm...

After all the cheese was melted into the sherry, we poured the cheese into a tray and then into the fridge to set.  It was supposed to set like burger cheese so we could slice pieces out and use on the burger.  After a good hour or so, it still hadn't set so I placed the tray in the freezer for a couple of minutes.  It set then, however upon tasting the cheese, it was very grainy and we made the executive decision not to use it.

The tomato sauce, however, was lush! Beautifully rich, savoury and just yum.  Just a pity there was not alot of it.  Next time I will use very ripe tomatoes and use more of the flesh to create more sauce.  Sarah planned to use all the potato and tomato left overs in a soup.  Good idea!

Time to finish off the brioche.  The prefermented dough was added into the mixing bowl and to this I added 100g egg yolks and 30g of water, specified to be 20˚C!  This was beaten together until the mix was smooth and liquid, about 4 minutes.  All mixing is done on medium speed.

To this mix we added 200g flour, 50g sugar, 35g skimmed milk powder, 7g salt and 7g yeast.  Mix it all together for another few minutes, then add 30g melted brown butter, 15g grapeseed oil and 18g trex.  Once again mix until fully combined.  Turn machine off, allow to rest for 10 minutes then beat again for 4 minutes and finally cover and refridgerate until use.

Right! Onto the second cooking of the chips.  We heated the oil in my well travelled fat fryer to 130˚C and removed the chips from the fridge.  I very gently placed half the chips (to cook in 2 batches) into the basket and lowered them into the oil.  The idea here is to gently fry the chips to remove yet more moisture, however you do not want to colour them.  Out of the oil, back onto the plate and into the fridge.

The brioche was now removed from the fridge and 5 x 85g portion of the dough was spooned into foil rings made specially by Sheila for the Brioche.  These were allowed to prove for almost 2 hours.

Burger time!  The time had arrived to do the final mincing of the burger meat.  Firstly, I set the mincer up with the 8mm plate attachement and then I laid out plastic wrap on the counter were I could lay out the mince as it came out of the machine.  We combined the salted chuck with the already minced ribeye and brisket.  This went through the mincer only once and as it was coming out the nozzle, I was collecting it gently in my hands and laying it out on the plastic wrap.  Once all the mince was through the machine, I rolled the plastic wrap into a tight sausage and twisted the ends closed.  Yup, you guessed it, into the fridge it went!

Finally, the brioche went into the oven at 225˚C. There was a little water placed into the dripping tray in the bottom of the oven to create steam in the oven to reduce the chances of a crusty top on the brioche.  After 7 minutes, we removed the brioche from the oven, applied a little egg wash to each one, a good sprinkling of sesame seeds and then back into the oven for about 5 minutes.

Naomi, Sarah's sister, finally arrived!  After telling all of us that she would be at the house by 3pm, she eventually arrived at 5pm.  We had all taken out friendly bets on when she would arrive and Sheila won having predicted 4:30pm.  Naomi set out to redeem herself by making the starter.
The starter was a ceviche of tuna with avocado, chilli, ginger, lime juice, soy and coconut milk served with a rustic toast.  Well, that's roughly what I remember going into the dish. 

The dish was yummy, so successfully redeemed me thinks!

All of our elements for the burger was complete, so now it was down to assembling them.  A tablespoon of the tomato concentrate was spread onto the base of each bun after we had sliced it open.  Sliced tomato, fried onion and lettuce was added as traditional accompaniments and these went into the buns to get them ready to simply add the cooked patty once these were cooked.

The burger 'sausage' and the twice cooked chips were removed from the fridge in preperation of the final shove for the finishing line.  The oil was heated to 180˚C for the third and final plunge of the chips.  Having spent a while in the fridge, they were now cold, dry and quite firm.  Just perfect!  In they went, and whilst they were bubbling away in the oil, we sliced the 'sausage' into 5 equal portions, still with the plastic on.  Keeping the plastic on kept the burgers nicely shaped during the cutting. 

Next, I removed the plastic and patted the burgers flat, to about the diameter of the buns and about 3cm thick.  These went into a hot frying pan until browned nicely and then we placed them into the oven to finish cooking.

Finally onto plating the dish and tucking in...

Main and starter out the way and we all decided that a break was needed following the large half pound burger.  More wine was poured and we chilled for about half an hour chatting about things tipsy mates chat about. 

I eventually got up and added the 5 egg whites to the mixing bowl, added about 30g of sugar and turned it on high.  After a little while, the eggs stiffened up and started transforming into a beautiful glossy white meringue.  I added the remaining 45g of sugar and continued beating the meringue until stiff peaks had formed.

We removed the Baked Alaska from the freezer and turned it out onto plate...  well, tried to!  It took a little effort, but eventually the dessert popped out and sat triumphantly on the plate.  We spooned the meringue onto the chocolate dome and evenly spread it around.  Instead of putting the dessert into the oven as suggested by the recipe, I pulled out my gas torch and had a little fun!

Thoughts?

Was it all worth the effort? Yes, I think it was.  It was definitely a fantastic experience and loads of fun creating these dishes.  The brioche tasted great and was slightly sweet against the rich meat.  The burger itself was fantastic.  The only seasoning in the meat was the salt, no herbs, egg, breadcrumbs or pepper but this didn't change the reality that the texture, flavour and tenderness of the patty was amazing.

The chips were also brilliant although I will cook them slightly longer next time during the 3rd cooking to create a more even golden colour and crispy texture.

The Baked Alaska was tasty and very decadent, especially when more chocolate sauce was added.  I reckon I'll make Baked Alaska again, however maybe a different version of the dish.

Will I do the burger again?  Yes, especially the meat patty.  It was a sublime tortoise version of 'fast' food heaven and the 7 hours of kitchen time proved that a little extra effort makes all the difference.  The chips were just scrumptious, fluffy and crunchy in the same mouthful!  Whether or not I make the cheese, tomato sauce or buns again is debatable.

All in all, we had loads of fun preparing everything and I hope Sarah learnt a little something.  We've already planned the next couple of Masterclasses...  Indian dishes and making sausages from scratch.  I believe duck, plum and spring onion sausage was the inspiration...