Aussies love their lamb. I?ve seen it on menus here far more often than I did in the States, and it has intrigued me. Why so much lamb, Australia? It?s quite simple, really. Lamb = meaty nuggets of delicious goodness. That?s good enough for me. I?ve decided to jump on the lamb band wagon. I thought it would be fun to experiment with lamb burgers and since I?m an impatient person, I wanted to try out two recipes at once.
The first burger was just some minced lamb (ground lamb in the U.S.) that I mixed with garlic, chopped Italian parsley, some salt and pepper. The second burger came from a gourmet deli at the Central Market, and it had lamb, rosemary and mint in it. For the base, I chose these adorable little seeded buns that I toasted. I let the man do the man thing and grill them, and then I put them on the buns to melt the cheese on.
The garlic-parsley burger got some mild Australian feta on top and the rosemary-mint burgers had some camembert, and then under the broiler to melt a bit. The feta didn?t melt so much as brown and soften, which was nice in its own way
but the camembert went to town and melted evenly. Way to go, camembert.
The feta burger was topped with black olives, tomato and humus. It was just?okay. The burger needed to be more flavorful. It was mainly just garlicky and not in the right way. I felt like it needed another flavor to balance out the garlic.
The Camembert on rosemary mint lamb burger was much better. We topped it with some Maggie Beer Cabernet table sauce, a grape sauce for meat that tastes a bit like American barbecue sauce without the smoke and slightly sweeter. So I guess it is not really like American barbecue sauce at all. Nice one, LTG.
It went great with the cheese, rosemary and mint. So well, in fact, that I ended up stealing the last bits of my partner?s burger as well. He still doesn?t understand that my pretty ring means I am entitled to all of his food. Duh. ~LTG
