Inspired by one of last weeks episodes of  Masterchef (for the Professionals) – the one where the chefs were asked to make a feast from old scraps like fish heads, peelings, bones and skin – I decided to look in the back of the fridge for the ingredients of my birthday feast this evening.

“Don’t worry too much about me, I’m still full from your wonderful scones,” said Chris as he saw me pull out the old left-over burgers from the Bonfire Night celebrations on Friday.

“I think they’re still okay,” I assured him. (The scones were consumed at eleven-thirty in the morning!)

“Well, just one, I do like your home-made burgers,” Chris tried to sound more enthusiastic.

“I know,” I had a brainwave, “I’ll call it ‘Deconstructed Burgers’, or spaghetti, as you’ve never known it before!”

“Oh? Alright, but not too much then. You know how I find spaghetti rather filling,” said Chris warily.

And this is how to make “Deconstructed Burgers”…

Deconstructed Burgers

Ingredients:

3 four-day old beef burgers

1 spoon of old fried onion (which were in the Tupperware container with the burgers)

2 sticks limp celery

5 fresh (but old) mushrooms

1 floret fairly fresh broccoli

1 tin chopped tomatoes

2 Oxo cubes

1 handful dried linguine pasta sticks

Grated parmesan

Method:

Boil water for linguine in large saucepan. Forget to add salt. Do not worry about timing.

Take a slightly smaller pan and add a little olive oil. Cut the mushrooms and the limp celery before frying in the hot oil.

Deconstruct the burgers (cut into small pieces) and throw in with the vegetables. Add tin of chopped tomatoes and sprinkle in some dried oregano (or similar, if your glasses aren’t at hand and you can’t read the labels).

Grind some Himalayan pink salt over the sauce (then take the top off the grinder); add some white pepper, which Chris doesn’t care for (but he will never know); add the old onion rings and, if it still tastes funny, add one (or more) crushed cloves of garlic.

Finely cut the floret of broccoli and throw it in with the deconstructed burgers. Cook for ten minutes on a low heat.

Fork out the pieces of broccoli.

Drain the linguine and rinse with hot water. Leave to dry while you fork out more bits of green floret. When nearly cold serve the pasta onto similarly cold plates (you may need to use two or three sturdy implements to separate the mass into strands.

Spoon the deconstructed burger sauce onto the pasta and sprinkle on some Parmesan cheese (or cheaper substitute from Lidl’s).

Et voila! Bon appetite!

 

We did eat well, so well that, we felt quite full very quickly; indeed, most of the pasta and half of the sauce were left at the end of the birthday feast.

“What was the funny green stuff in the sauce?” asked Chris. “It wasn’t mold – was it?”

“How skeptical!” I laughed, “I’ll have you know that the broccoli was about the only thing that really was fresh!”