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I love burgers. I won’t deny it: I love burgers!
Ok, I won’t always make my own patties, but it is well worth the effort. Actually it ain’t that much of an effort. And for my homemade Jucy Lucy, I like to make my own patties. Did I just say Jucy Lucy? Yep! A Jucy Lucy basically is a cheeseburger with the cheese inside the patty.
Serve on a beautiful big size bun from your local bakery and layer it with your favorite condiments. I like to mix up things: mayonnaise, ketchup, onions rings, tomatoes, advocados, salsa, pickles, … The options are endless.
For this recipe, I used mayo, lettuce, tomato, my homemade ketchup, maple syrup glazed smoked bacon and pico de gallo.
Preparation Method: (serves 6)
For the burger patties, add the ground beef, 1tsp of ground cumin, 1tsp of sweet paprika, 1/2tsp of garlic powder and an egg to a mixing bowl. Mix well and season to taste with salt and pepper. When it is mixed well, form into a disc and put in the fridge for at less to firm up.
In a separate bowl mix 100gr Emmental cheese and 150gr Cheddar cheese. Take you ground beef from the fridge. Decide into 6 equal parts. Each part will make 1 burger patty. Devide each of the parts in 2 again and form 2 discs of about 8cm with them. Put one disc on your working table, put a good spoonful of the cheese mix in the middle. Put the 2nd disc on top and close the sides to form a burger patty stuffed with cheese. Return to fridge to firm up again.
While the patties firm up, you can make the other condiments. Read all about my homemade ketchup in a previous blog post.
For the the maple syrup glazed smoked, spread 12 thinly sliced slices of smoked bacon on a baking tray. Make sure the slices do not touch or overlap. Brush each slice with a generous amount of maple syrup. Put in a pre-heated oven at 120°C for 45 minutes. This will cook and dry the bacon. Take out of the oven and leave to cool a cooling rack to further crisp up the bacon.
I made a final relish: pico de gallo. Dice up 4 Roma tomatoes and 1/2 a rede onion, chop up the chilantro, and dice the clove of garlic and 1/2 a jalapeño pepper very finely. Add all ingredients to a mixing bowl, season with pepper and salt and add the juic of a lime. Mix well and marinate for at least an hour.
We are ready to build the burger now. Slice the burger buns open, brush with olive oil and put on and high-heat grill to toast. Now grill the burger patties until they have crosshatched grill marks on both sides. About a minute or 2 before the patties are done, put the glazed smoke bacon on the grill too to warm through.
Spread some mayonnaise on the both half of the bun, add a leaf of iceberg lettuce, a slice of cœur de bœuf tomato and the grilled burger patty. Top with the homemade ketchup, the glazed smoked bacon and the pico de gallo. Close with the top half of the bun. Keep everything together with a skewer and top with a pickle.
Ingredients:
- 500gr lean ground beef
- 1tsp ground cumin
- 1tsp sweet paprika powder
- 1/2tsp garlic powder
- 1 egg
- 100gr grated Emmental cheese
- 150gr grated Cheddar cheese
- Salt & pepper
- Maple syrup
- 12 sliced of smoked bacon
- 4 Roma tomatoes
- 1/2 red onion
- 2 tablespoons of chilantro
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1/2 jalapeño pepper
- 1 lime
- Iceberg lettuce
- 1 cœur de bœuf tomato
- Olive oil
- 6 burger buns
It had been too long. I always love working with Joke, but for some strange reason, it was kinda difficult to meet last year. But this year, we’re off to a good start. We met at the studio of my good buddy Bart for a photo shoot.
We had a lot of catching up to do, so it turned into a quick shoot and a lot of laughing. But if Joke is going to wear all the latex outfits she tried on to shoot, we will have to make quite a few plans this year.
Who else but my good friend Shannety should be the model in my 1st photo shoot of 2016? We discussed our plans for this year over dinner a couple weeks earlier. And I promise you we will have a busy year.
We’re starting off the year quite simple with a couple of new latex outfits and color gel experiments.
And since it’s the 50th anniversary of Star Trek this year, we got out the Star Trek uniform. You’ll be seeing more of this, I’m sure.
Making your own ketchup is a lot of fun and so easy to do. You can make it to your own taste and match it to the dish you’re serving.
Ingredients:
- 6 roma or san marzano tomatoes
- 4 cloves of garlic
- Thyme
- Rosemary
- Basil
- 2 table spoons of sugar
- Salt
- Black pepper
- Olive oil
Preparation Method:
Preheat the oven at 120ºC. Quarter the tomatoes and spread evenly on a backing sheet. Crush the 4 cloves of garlic with the side of your knife. Don’t bother to peel the garlic as it will be discarded later. Add the crushed garlic to the tomatoes. Season with pepper and salt and sprinkle over 2 table spoons of sugar. Add a couple of sprigs of thyme and rosemary, and about 10 leaves of basil. Sprinkle over a little olive oil.
Put the tomatoes in the preheated oven for 60 to 90 minutes, until the tomatoes are semi dried out. After you take the tomatoes out of the oven, remove the skins, blend to a puree then pass through a strainer to remove the pips. Check the seasoning: the ketchup should be slightly sweet. Add sugar if needed. Refrigerate before serving.
You can easily spice up your ketchup with Tabasco sauce if you like it spicy or a bit of red wine vinegar if you like it tangy. I like mine sweet and peppery but with a clear taste of tomatoes, so I only add freshly cracked black pepper.
The longer you leave the tomatoes in the oven, the more they will dry out. Drying out the tomatoes will intensify their flavor and will get you a more concentrated ketchup.
My last photo shoot of the year just had to be a latex fashion shoot.
Sara came to our studio last week, and when we started talking about outfits and matching shoes, it sparked a couple of ideas. Ideas that I’m going to work on in 2016 for sure. But for now, I am happy with the way the photos with Sara turned out. It was a lot of fun working with her.
Model Sara is wearing a red and black latex dress by Mademoiselle Ilo.
On Christmas Evening 1968, the crew of NASA‘s Apollo 8 were the 1st to broadcast from orbit around the moon. Their broadcast included a beautiful message of holiday cheer.
This photo of my little buddy #duckie is an homage to the crew of Apollo 8. Prints of the earth and the moon–done by my good friend Glenn at Studico–and some crafts & arts, I put together this scene. I back lit the earth with an Elinchrom studio strobe, setup the print of the moon and #duckie on a couple of C-stands and lit them with a studio strobe and a small softbox. And look… #duckie is happily floating in orbit around the moon.
Happy Holidays!
This is a little throwback to last summer on my trip to Spain. I am part of a team photographers… Well a group of friends actually. And this summer we took a trip to Spain for fun, food, drinks and relaxing. We invited a couple of models to fill up the rest of the time with photo shoots.
On one of the photo shoots, Marie was kind enough to wear this latex bathing suit by William Wilde.
Light of Day Foundation is an organization founded in 1998 in Red Bank, NJ to raise awareness for Parkinson’s disease and fund research for a cure. Many artists and bands, including Bruce Springsteen, have played concert to raise money for Light of Day. At 1st, these Light of Day concerts were staged in New Jersey, but for a few years now, they tour Europe too.
My buddy Jeffrey De Roeck brought the Light of Day concert to Trix in Antwerp for the 5th year. And I always have the privilege to shoot pictures from the 1st row at the shows.
This year’s line up for the show included Joe D’Urso, Eric Bazilian (from the band The Hooters), Rob Dye, Vini Lopez (fromer E Street Band drummer), Erwin Nyhoff, Eddie Manion (who toured with Bruce Springsteen last year and plays with The Asbury Jukes) and our own Jesse Ashfield.
Here’s a couple of shots of last night. A full album with photos from the show is available on Frontview Magazine.
Here’s a couple of photos from a while back I shot with the lovely Halina. I had never had her in our studio before, but what a joy it was to meet her. She’s energetic, upbeat and full of spunk. It is really fun to have her in the studio.
When we ran through the outfits I had prepared for the shoot, she immediately fel in love with this latex body by Pandora Deluxe. And I must say it really suits her well.
I shot this earlier in November in Antwerp. Sarah and I had the date for this photoshoot planned for a few months. Originally we were going to shoot in my studio, but the weather was so incredibly beautiful–it was what you would call an Indian Summer–in the days coming up to our appointment, we decided to get out of our studio and head to Antwerp for a fashion shoot.
And that turned out to be a great idea: I had a fun afternoon with Sarah… And ice cream too.