FFwD - Cafe Salle Pleyel Hamburger and Eggplant Caviar

This week's French Fridays with Dorie dish is not at all what you'd expect to see on a French dining table - a hamburger.  However, this is apparently not just any hamburger, but the Cafe Salle Pleyel hamburger, created for the cafe's owner, Helene Samuel, who stated the following about the burger in The New York Times:

“It has the taste of the forbidden, the illicit — the subversive, even. Eating with your hands, it’s pure regression. Naturally, everyone wants it.”

You can find the recipe online here, but in a nutshell, this burger is comprised of beef mince, sun-dried tomatoes, capers, cornichons (for which I substituted gherkins) and fresh herbs (I only used coriander and dried tarragon and skipped the thyme).  The burgers are browned to medium rare on each side:

An onion jam is made to go with the burgers:

The burgers are topped with thin slices of parmesan cheese:

and the whole lot is placed on a burger bun, as shown at the top of this post.  If you are so inclined, you can decorate the plate with dill pickles, but I also skipped this.

I am not sure that this burger was so good as to be subversive, but it was definitely delicious and beats the pants off the cardboard offering at your local greasy spoon.  I served my burger with Outback Spirit wild rosella cranberry relish one night, and with Cooper's Ale barbeque sauce the next - both combinations were good.

Playing catch up, I also made eggplant caviar from last week:

Just like Tricia S's teenagers, I didn't dislike this, but I wouldn't run out to make it again either.

Finally, I am featuring a gratuitous photo (sourced from Yahoo! Seven TV) of Bec's fab 1920's inspired wedding veil by Melbourne designers, J'Aton, featured in Tuesday night's finale of Winners and Losers:

There was a lot of criticism of Bec's hair and dress on Facebook.  Personally, the dress was not my style (too much like a doily), but I loved the much-maligned veil and hairdo - anything inspired by the 1920s wins my heart, and I thought Bec looked great.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Orange and poppyseed cake

Who doesn't like a nice piece of cake with their cup of tea?  I am sure there are people who don't, but I am not one of them.  A cake that is perfect with a cuppa is Orange and Poppyseed Cake, just like this handsome bundt I made from p110 of the June 2011 edition of Australian Delicious magazine.

This cake was quite dense, and the orange flavour was not as pronounced as it might have been, but the cake was still delicious.  I skipped the glaze that was recommended with the recipe and served my cake as is.

To make this cake, you will need:

3/4 cup poppyseeds
1 cup milk
225g softened butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
2 cups plain flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 vanilla bean or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest
60ml orange juice

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Grease and dust with plain flour a 20cm bundt pan.

Put the poppy seeds and milk in a small saucepan and heat to just below boiling point, then remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

In a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until thick and creamy.  Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition.

Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda together into a clean bowl.  Add one third of the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until just combined.

Add half the milk and poppyseeds to the batter and combine.  Repeat with the remainder of the flour and milk mixtures, ending with flour.  Stir in the seeds from the vanilla bean or  the vanilla extract, together with the orange juice and zest.

Pour the batter into the prepared bundt pan and bake for 50-60 minutes or until cooked through.  Remove the cake from the oven and cool it in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack  to coll completely.

Once the cake is cool, you can glaze it if desired.