Pork medallions and vegetables.

Pork medallions, cheese stuffed mushroom with peppers, asparagus tips with a big knob of butter, mashed swede and carrot, roast celeriac. Swilled down with a glass or two of good wine. Less than 15 carbs. Low carb unsustainable long term, make you own mind up.

Beef burger, served with Cheesy Leeks and Mushrooms.

Well it may be nice to prepare, cook, eat and enjoy the worlds finest steaks, or the worlds freshest line caught fish, but I recently prepared, cooked and ate a gourmet beef burger! Well I thought it was pretty gourmet … Gordon Ramsey … may not agree, but if you‘re interested I‘ll share this easy recipe with you - and feel free to amend it slightly. For example you may wish to add a teaspoon of mustard to the recipe or use different herbs ..the choice is yours. That‘s the delight of cooking you can explore, invent, mix up the ingredients to better suit your palate. But here’s what I did.  

Serves Two Decent Sized Burgers

250/300 gram lean minced beef

1 red onion chopped

1 egg yolk

1 - 2 tsp olive oil

1 tsp dried mixed herbs *

Salt and pepper to season

* I used dried herbs but if you have fresh ones even better

Simple Method

Just place all the ingredients in a mixing bowl, then stir very well making sure it is well mixed. Using your hands divide the mix and shape into two equal sized burgers. Place on a baking tray and cook in a pre-heated oven at 200 or Gas Mark 6 for approx 30 minutes. All ovens vary so check burgers at about 20 minutes and adjust cooking time as necessary. When cooking burgers in the oven it may be an idea to grease or line your baking tray …. helps with the washing up afterwards!

Optional

You can either have plain burgers or why not put some stilton cheese on top of the burgers, for the last 10 minutes of cooking and let it melt - it makes the burgers that extra delicious.

We enjoyed this dish served with some mushrooms cooked in butter, I use a small frying pan, with melted butter and cook on top of the hob. For the cheesy leeks, I just sliced up two leeks (wash them first) placed them in a small ovenproof dish. Covered them with double cream and cooked in the oven for approx 15 minutes. Take leeks out of oven and sprinkle with some grated cheddar cheese, return to oven for further 5 minutes or until the cheese has melted and it’s a slight golden brown colour - the leeks should be just soft.