GOLDBURGER

Now in this recipe I did end up using quite a lot of this stuff, but hey - what's the harm in ingesting a large amount of...*squints at label*...titanium dioxide?

Oh.

Ahoy! Unless you've only just been born (in which case, congratulations on having learned to read before mastering control of a number of your body's sphincters) or have just emerged from a not-inconsiderable nap, you'll probably be painfully aware from the weapons-grade fawning undertaken by 99% of the UK's media that there was a Royal Wedding the other day.

As these things go, apparently this one wasn't too dreadful - in fact it seems to have annoyed quite a few Daily Mail readers with its progressive take on things, so good on them for winding up the 'gammons'. It did still cost an absolute bumload of cash, though. Specifically, your cash and my cash, as we fund QEII and her ever-expanding clan through our taxes and (if you're an idiot) purchases of Prince Chuck's brand of dismal, overpriced biscuits from Waitrose.

Now I'm not saying I could have done it cheaper and saved them (or rather, me and you - but most importantly, me) a few quid, but...actually, yes. That's exactly what I'm saying.

Y'see, for many of the guests - in particular, the more cognitively challenged ones who may be suffering from the effects of generations of the sort of snobbery-driven breeding usually more associated with Crufts - it wouldn't have been the taste of the food that mattered anyway, it's the impression of luxury and decadence and the associated element of showing off that's important. So while on the big day they doubtless had posh, expensive ingredients such as grilled swan beaks, soup made of actual coins and costly hot dogs (you know, the ones that don't come in a can full of seawater) served in an antique candelabra, I reckon I could have dished up something just as ostentatious to satisfy the very Trumpiest of bloated, tasteless braggarts while still pocketing a lot more profit. Er, while still saving you taxes I mean. Definitely the last one.

But what to serve? Well, as Spandex Ballet once sang, "Gold!". And then some other words as well, otherwise it'd be a pretty crap song. But they were on the money with the key point - what's more gaudy, tacky and showy than something needlessly covered with a bit of Au? (Check me out, making use of my 4 years at uni spent studying chemistry! See, Mum, it wasn't a complete waste. You can stop crying now! Mum! Mum?!)

Anyway, without further ado and before you recall I just admitted I'd be happy to rip you off to line my own pockets, let's bling up a burger on a budget!

Ingredients:

I think I've created a new genre of food: Asian/West Country yokel/spoilt child fusion!

If you too want to make a meal fit for a king (specifically: Burger King, or perhaps Elvis as his
waistline approached its corpse-on-the-shitter zenith), you'll need to send a nearby peasant out to buy you the following:

250 g mince
A packet of Haribo gold bears
A bottle Thatcher's Gold cider
Some golden vegetable rice
Some buns
1 or more golden delicious apples
A packet of gold edible glitter spray (or non-edible if you're both a cheapskate and not in any bother about making it through to the weekend with all your kidneys intact)
An egg
50g of plain flour
A pot noodle*

*Why a pot noodle? Well I vaguely remembered they used to be made by Golden Wonder so would be nicely in keeping with the gold theme, but turns out they had the audacity to go bust a while back and sold off a load of their brands. So let's just imagine I'm doing this in about 1998 or something and it'll all be fine. For added authenticity, why not try reading this with the resolution turned right down on your monitor and waiting 30 minutes before looking at each image to simulate a lovely, slow download? Aah, dial-up. Those were the days. The days you waited sodding ages for absolutely anything to happen, to be precise.

Method:

To start off with, let's make a burger. You can make it as small or large as you like (within reason - I'm not suggesting you smother the entire Earth with a beef disc), but I went for quarter pounder size. Squish it together and pop it on a tray and then into the oven for about 20 mins. It'll also help if you turn said oven on first to about gas mark 6, or 200 C in electric money.

If you don't have a really, REALLY well used baking tray handy, why not use a bit of old sheet metal fished out of a skip on an industrial estate?

While that's hopefully not sitting in an oven that didn't light first time and is thus slowly filling the room with toxic gas (why yes, I still haven't replaced that crappy old cooker), we can make what I suppose is an apple fritter.

If you assume your apple is our beloved planet Earth, you want to chop our a ringlet roughly where the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are (y'see, this is the sort of detail you wouldn't get from a Hairy Biker or Ramsay. I spoil you all sometimes). Then, core it and peel it and apply some of the flour to the outside to make the batter stick. What batter? The batter we're about to make now - give me a chance!

Fun fact: this would also make a great 'doughnut' for a gluten intolerant person. Or given there's not a lot of it, an apple for someone who doesn't like apples much.

Mix your egg and the rest of the flour together, and add about a third of the bottle of cider. It'll froth and stink like a clogged Cornish pub urinal at the end of happy hour, but once it's calmed down give it a good whisk until you end up with something approaching this:

You could try making this into a pancake, but if you do here's a top tip: don't.

Then, dunk your floury apple wheel, and fry in hot oil until golden brown on both sides. Which will necessitate you flipping it over at some point, unless you're Superman and have laser vision or your kitchen lights are really quite worryingly overpowered.

By now your burger should probably be done as well, so hoist that out of the oven and leave it to cool slightly, along with your fruity hoop.

The ideal place to pop these would be on the piece of kitchen towel I don't have any of so didn't.

Nearly there - just a bit of assembly and the like now. First, get the rice going in the microwave as once done that'll need at least 2 minutes to cool to the point it doesn't immediately scald your hand when you go to open it. Then bung your kettle on to boil and then make up the pot noodle. While that's gestating or whatever the process is whereby it goes from a brick of congealed string into a mass of damp ribbons, grab your glitter spray and start blinging! I of course started on my buns (careful, madam):

It's shinier than it came out in the picture, honest.

You may want to just do the top one to avoid filling your kitchen with a sparkly mist which will then inevitably settle on your skin and make you look like a half-arsed Oscar statue impersonator. I went the whole hog though, and did top, bottom and innards!

Taste the money. TASTE IT I SAY!!!

Once engoldened, pop your golden golden delicious wheel atop the burger, spoon on as many noodles as you think you can tolerate, and your main course is done!

I think it's fair to say we won't be seeing the 'McTapeworm' anywhere outside this blog for a while yet...

By now the rice should be sorted as well, so pour that in a bowl and stir in a lovely, juicy handful of gold bears.

This looks pretty awful, I'll grant you. But given how much I hate prawns I'd still rather have this than paella.

Finally, assuming you haven't had the sense to tip away the rest of your awful cider (and as you haven't had the sense to stop reading this, it's a good bet), serve that in a glass and you're all finished with your big bucks moneymaker meal!

Results:

This must be the reverse of what it's like to be one of those human statues when they try and have a sarnie at lunchtime.

Well it looks like a vaguely glittery burger, so given most of the rich people you'd serve this to will be on their 10th bottle of Bollinger already you're probably safe without it being too shiny. But how does it taste? Let's have a go shall we?

Note the noodle hanging out the back, which for added aesthetic awfulness makes it look like I *may* be eating a ratburger.

I don't often show my face in this blog because hey, who needs that on top of the rancid food offerings? But I felt I should on this one just so you could see how gold-covered I got. Which was this much:

I'm not going for a selfie trout pout - I'm actually trying not to cough out a load of surprisingly heat-retentive noodles.

Not that much, as it turns out - for better or worse (worse) I managed to ingest most of the glitter rather than get it on my fizzog. But most amazingly, I have to admit the burger wasn't only alright, it was genuinely delicious. So delicious I would wholeheartedly recommend you try making it! (Albeit perhaps without the glitter, unless you're off out afterwards to some sort of club night and have limited time available so are killing 2 birds with 1 stone.)

I know some of you will be highly disappointed by this, but remember: this was a meal of two halves, and there's very much a ying to the burger's yang.

Nothing like a plate of maggots in warm snot, eh? Bleeeeeeeeeeeeee.

...and here it is, in all it's claggy, oozing yinginess. Turns out that warm rice is enough to melt haribo and it morphs into a sort of sickly sweet ectoplasm. Of course looks aren't everything, but you know what? Looks are a pretty bloody good guide sometimes, because this was terrible. It was so sweet and cloying it was like having compressed candy floss injected directly into your tongue before you down a pint of Gloy gum. And of course the ideal accompaniment for something so saccharine is lovely savoury rice and veg - imagine biting into a Double Decker and finding out they've replaced the filling with mashed turnip and chunks of radish. That. It was so awful I voluntarily washed it down with the rest of the cider, despite that particular type of cider looking like cat piss and smelling like a faulty grandma.

So a partial success and a partial failure (which is which depends on how much you hate me, I suspect). But just as an added bonus, I'm writing this the day after and I'm fairly sure the semi-liquid haribo and rice, possibly with a helping fist from the pot noodle, has seen me visiting the loo a lot more often than I'd like to. So to take your mind off of that little chunk of TMI, let's finish on a song!

Goldburger (wah waaaah wah)
He's the man
The man with the Midas touch
He gets food poisoning much

Actually, let's not as I can't think of another verse and that one was fairly bad as it was. Bye!

Next time: ICED SUMMER ROAST