A double-chinned Orlando Bloom to Sir Elton John: Is that a Truffle Mini Burger in your pocket, or are you just chuffed to see me?

Hours of good reading on this blog has kept me from my normal cooking duties. Well, that and I haven't had a kitchen the last few mostly sunny London hotel-filled weeks. But I've endured. (And, uh, judging by my stretched belly, prospered).

I've eaten grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, deep-fried over-medium eggs, and bacon and HP sauce* sandwiches for breakfast; honey-drenched yogurt for lunch; and marvelously Mid-Eastern mint-inflected curry, frizzle-fried seaweed, scrumpy soy-braised shrimp, and Polish veal cutlets to make my babcia in Heaven (one should hope ;) weep for joy.

But the time has come: an English recipe for Refridger readers. (I'll make it as soon as I can get mesewf to a royt propah kitchen.)

This from Sir Elton John, as printed on the "entertaining" page of InStyle UK's October 2008 issue:

Truffled Mini Beef Burgers (serves 12)

1 tsp diced onion
1 tsp crushed garlic
1T olive oil (for frying)
80g beef mince (0.17 pounds)
1 tsp tomato ketchup
1 tsp Worcester sauce
1 tsp English mustard
1T chopped parsley
pinch celery salt
1 tsp truffle oil
salt and pepper to taste

To serve:
6 cocktail brioche buns, halved
handful of mustard leaves

Sweat the onion and garlic in the olive oil over a medium heat until soft. Allow to cool, then mix with the other ingredients. Mould into 12 burgers and chill for an hour. Fry in a little olive oil over a high temperature on each side for one minute, then lower the heat and cook for three more minutes. Lightly toast and butter the brioche buns, place a burger and a mustard leaf on each half and skewer with a cocktail stick. Serve immediately.

Mind you, Sir Elton served these hot and beefy little buggers with smoked fish and duck-egg tart with caviar, black bass with potatoes, artichokes and pea voloute, chocolate cake leafed in gold, and an edible $10 note. I know you will, too.
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*HP (named for the rumor that the sauce was made in the House of Parliament)--similar, I say similar to, not the same as, A-1 Steak Sauce--contains Malt Vinegar, Tomatoes, Molasses, Spirit Vinegar, Dates, Glucose Syrup, Sugar, Salt, Modified Starch, Rye Flour, Tamarinds, Spices, Onion. No Artificial Colours, Preservatives or Flavours, Low in Fat, Suitable for Vegetarians.