Wintry Sunday nights

So, it's Sunday night, and this is my designated night of cooking - although I have been cooking more than my share lately, this being my third night in a row.

I made a great winter comfort dish tonight - hamburg steak. This is a Japanese-style Western dish, and the tomato sauce reduction is really a lovely warming dish.

Japanese-style Western cuisine, or 洋食、started in Japan since the Meiji Restoration of 1868. One of the first so-called Western cuisine dishes was sukiyaki, now a quintessential Japanese meal. This is because Japanese people, when first introduced to beef, were so aghast at the taste of it, cooks seasoned it with soy sauce so that there was some familiar flavour to grasp onto. To this day, the most famous sukiyaki restaurants in Japan are found in the Asakusa area, where the dish is said to have its origin.

Other Japanese takes on Western cuisine include 'omurice', which is bascally rice (usually in a sauce of some kind, tomato or demiglace) wrapped in a fluffy omelette. This may sound simple, but is no mean feat. The act of wrapping a soft, billowy egg cover over a lump of saucy, satiny rice, is one that requires technique, timing and precision. None of which I can be bothered to attempt.

So, hamburg steak. It is essentially a meat patty, which I have stewed in a tomato sauce. The other kind of sauce it is usually served with, is the demiglace, but that requires stock and a lot of time, so I've done a simple recipe. For those playing at home, here goes:

Ingredients (serves 2-3):
Hamburg Patty:
Mixed mince (I used a mix of pork and veal, but it's up to you) 300g
2 onions
Half a cup of breadcrumbs
3-5 tablespoons of milk
1 egg
2 tablespoons of plain flour
salt and pepper to taste
pinch of nutmeg
butter

For the tomato sauce
1 can of chopped tomatoes
2 tablespoons ketchup
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
3 tablespoons red wine
1 cube of chicken stock
2 cups water
1 teaspoon sugar
salt and pepper to taste


First, finely dice your onions:

Saute the onions in a bit of butter until soft and translucent. Remove from the pan to cool. You can do this part a couple of hours earlier than when you are making the hamburg. If your onions are too hot, it cooks the meat when you mix them together and also makes it hard to handle the patty mixture.
Add the milk to the breadcrumbs to soften and set aside

Next, in a large bowl, mix the minced meat, breadcrumbs, cold onions, salt and pepper, nutmeg, egg and flour and with your hands mix this around 50 times. This will make the meat tender and juicy.

Oil your hands and get a snooker-ball size bit of the mixture and throw it between each hand to take the air out of the patty. This is an important step of making hamburg steak.
You should have something looking like this after playing catch with the patties.

Saute these in a bit of oil until they have a bit of colour on both sides, and then add all the ingredients for the sauce in the pan.
Bring the sauce to the boil, and then let it simmer for 15-20 minutes with the lid on. If it looks too watery by 15 minutes, take the lid off for the last 5 minutes. It should reduce nicely!

And...tada!

(there is some pumpkin puree at the back of the dish as well)

Looks good, right? It tasted pretty good as well, even if I say so myself. I'm not a big fan of rice, but I hear the sauce is pretty good with it.

Give it a try, it's a pretty easy recipe and the results are worth it, especially since good, juicy hamburg is pretty hard to find in Sydney.