Food Truck - "No Reservations" - "Hamburger Hill" Burger and Garlic Fries

I've eaten at this place before, and I enjoyed it a lot. This time I went for the burger, and as I always do, the Garlic Fries.

The Score

Burger - FAIL
Really wasn't digging the burger at all. The bun was actually a little bit burnt, but the actual taste of the bun itself was a little too sweet for my tastes. The burger was nicely charred on the outside, but the meat in the middle was pretty grey - rawish, but not in the deep red awesome way - it was more like it had gently boiled, which made it pretty soggy. The patty itself was also pretty bland - needed some more seasoning to lift it.

The worst aspect was the amount of grease, which seemed to have been generated by the muenster cheese - it totally saturated the bottom of the bun and made it really slimy to eat. It totally put me off it to be honest - I couldn't finish the thing as it was making me want to barf.

Shame, as I really dug the "Silence of the Lambs" wrap I had there before.

Garlic Fries - EPIC WIN
I get these every time, because they are awesome. A crunchy fry with a crispy garlic batter on the outside, and a scattering of raw garlic on top. They are served with an anchovy, caper aoli - which is as awesome as it sounds. However, I couldn't manage all of them today as I was so greased out by the burger. They are best shared with someone as they are so rich they can make you feel a bit bloated afterwards!

Experimental Cooking - Lamb Shank in Red Wine

Makes 2

Ingredients:

• 2 Lamb Shanks
• 1 Bottle of Red Wine
• Fresh Rosemary
• 3 Anchovy fillets
• Lawry's seasoning salt
• Dash of Soy Sauce
• Salt
• Pepper
• 2 Carrots
• 2 Sticks of Celery
• 5 Cloves of Garlic
• 1 Leek
• 2 1/2 pints Beef Stock
• 4 Desiree Potatoes

The Technique

Chop the leek and start sweating down in a large stock pan. Add chopped carrot and celery once the leeks are soft. Cook these for a few minutes more and season with salt and pepper. Season the lamb shanks with Lawrys (love using this stuff on red meat, really seems to bring out the Umami flavor), then add them to the pan - brown them off at a fairly high heat. Once browned, deglaze the bottom of the pan with some red wine. 

Once ready, pour the rest of the red wine into the pot and add the beef stock - enough to cover the shanks. Add the 3 anchovy fillets (they should melt into the sauce and add extra flavor) and a dash of soy sauce. Add some chili flakes, 3 sprigs of rosemary and put the lid on, lower the heat and simmer for 2 hours or so (want to get the lamb to fall right off the bone).

Once the lamb is ready, remove from the pan and wrap in tin foil to keep warm. Now reduce the sauce as much as possible to make it nice and viscous. As you are reducing the sauce put the peeled potatoes in a pan and boil for 20 mins.

Once the potatoes are soft, add a load of butter to taste, a splash of milk or cream and mash the crap out of them. If you want to be poncy you can pass them through a sieve, but that's up to you. It's a bit of effort, but makes them extra smooth. I couldn't be arsed myself and just mashed em the normal way...

So after reducing your sauce to a nice thick consistency, or if like me you get bored after about 40 mins and just want to eat the damn thing, throw in some corn starch to thicken that up. Mashed potatoes on the bottom, shank on top, then pour on that gravy. As Jamie "fat tongue" Oliver would say, Pukka!

The Score

WIN - the gravy was awesome with the mash, but the lamb shanks could have done with a while longer, weren't quite at the fall off the bone stage. So next time I will cook em for about 3 hours or so.

Experimental Cooking - Banana Squash with Ground Beef Stuffing

Makes 3

Ingredients:

• 3 Slices of Banana Squash
• 1lb of Ground Beef
• 3 Crimini Mushrooms
• 1 Shallot
• 2 Cloves of Garlic
• Glug of White Wine
• Lawrys Seasoning Salt
• Chili Pepper Flakes
• Dash of Cholula Chipotle Sauce
• Rosemary
• Handful of Parmesan
• Garlic and Herb Breadcrumbs
• Olive Oil
• Can of tomatoes

The Technique

First the Banana Squash slices. Cover liberally in olive oil, season with Lawrys and pepper, add some chili pepper flakes and rub those bad boys with the oily mix. Stick in the oven with a few sprigs of rosemary on top of each at 380F till they are cooked - can't remember how long it took, but it was a fair while...

Now the Ground Beef "stuffing". Chop the shallot and mushrooms to a fine dice then start cooking on a high heat. When the shallot has sweated down add the garlic (pureed). Chop the leaves from one sprig of rosemary and add. Then add the beef and cook. When near completion bung in a glug of white wine and cook off the alcohol. Season with more lawrys to taste. Add a dash of the chipotle sauce. Throw in the can of tomatoes and simmer for a while.

When the squash is pretty much cooked, add the beef to each, top with bread crumbs and parmesan and bake for a while longer till the crust looks nice and golden brown. Take it out and eat.

The Score:

WIN - but only just. This was a pretty good experiment, but could use a few improvements. The Banana Squash was a little too sweet - I'd probably use a Spaghetti Squash, Butternut or a Kabocha next time - something not so sweet. There was a touch too much rosemary in the beef, so I'd probably half the amount I put in. The breadcrumbs weren't that great either, as they went a little soggy. I'd probably put a layer of parmesan, then some Panko breadcrumbs next time. However, the stuffing was pretty awesome - I'd definitely work that into something else in the future.

Scoring Food

Cycled from Santa Monica to Redondo Beach and back again today, so to say I was hungry when I got home would be an understatement.

So I grabbed some random ingredients from the store to throw something together for dinner. As I was chucking ingredients into the pan, I thought it might be fun to track my experiments, just to remember what I did for next time if it turns out to be any good. Then, since LA is such a great place to eat out, why not track which places I liked. So, why not rate both my crappy cooking, and some of the great (and not so great) food from around LA.

So here it is. Yet another food blog. We need a rating scale, so why not the following:

• Epic Win - this food just made my face explode with delight.
• Win - this is pretty good stuff.
• Meh - average- yeah, whatever...
• Fail - bleurgh, not going to repeat this one.
• Epic Fail - seriously, never, ever again. Please cremate it.

With the important scoring system out of the way - time for a recipe, see you next post.