It sounds better doesn’t it, haché. Much better than minced, which is the usual English translation. Imagine a cookbook called’Everything minced’. You’d assume it was the memoirs of a hospital chef. You’d probably not want to buy it unless you lived in Hoxton.
There is of course a tradition across the world of chopping, mixing and combining ingredients. Steak tartare is a fancy example, koftes, burgers and meatballs being somewhat less so. And they all taste great.
Café Moderne in Paris is in love with chopped meat. The three men behind it come from different backgrounds but all love the mince.’Mince’ by the way means’thin’ in French, which is rather ironic when you think what a diet of burgers will do to you. It’s pronounced’mance’ by the way.
Inspired by New York street food and delis, they make meatballs, tartares, fishballs and burgers that would make any hipster drool into his beard. They mix and match combinations of flavours with wild aplomb creating spicy chicken meatballs, lip-smacking koftas, Lebanese lamb tartares, tandoori burgers, stuffed tomatoes as well as great sauces to inundate the lot and sides to accompany.
There’s even a cottage pie, perhaps the best use for mince of all. If you like your meat minced, and let’s face it who doesn’t? This book should get right on your griddle. Big simple mashed up flavours, that are taste bombs in your mouth, is a food trend that isn’t going away and the best bit is that even a monkey can cook, it as thousands of successful street food vendors have proved.
You’d have to be pretty useless not to hack it, in fact.