Austria 2024

 This week Heidi went one step further. She didn't even tell me what she was going to cook.

These are Fleischlaberl. Sort of burgers. They're ok. For once, no one turned their nose up at them. 

As burgers go, these are a little more effort than a basic beef patty. Pork and beef combine with stale bread chunks, seasoned and then, for the fun of it, coated in breadcrumbs. 

We served them in bread rolls with potato salad and vegetables, but apparently mash potatoes are more traditional. Siân felt like taking this further, at least for my plate, and added smoked cheese and sauerkraut! Fortunately, no one made me wear lederhosen. It has become somewhat a hobby of the girls to watch me eat strange things.

Raw meat

Raw meat with stuff (I have no idea why Tally's swimming goggles are on the kitchen worksurface)

The assembly line

Action shot

Ready to fry

Assembled with accompaniments 

Recipe

Ingredients

For the core

500g beef mince

500g pork mince

2 slices of white bread, toasted to imply it was stale

1 onion finely diced

8! cloves of garlic

2 tsp dried marjoram

2tsp salt

1sp black pepper

handful of fresh parsley, chopped

For the coating

some flour

2 eggs beaten

6 more slices of toasted bread, blitzed to crumbs

And oil to fry in.

Method

1. Mix all the ingredients of the core in a bowl and get your hands really gooey.
2. Roughly divide into 8 quarter-pounders, accuracy is not necessary, because it allows Daddy to pick the largest ones later.
3. Roll each patty in the flour, egg and breadcrumbs 
4. Shallow fry - find that the oil is instantly absorbed by the breadcrumbs, so keep adding oil as it cooks (this might not be ideally healthy).
5. Serve with anything else you can consider vaguely Austrian/Bavarian.