Kotlety

Tear the stale bread into a bowl and pour the milk over it.

Leave it for 10 minutes, until it is soft right through with no dry centre.

Squeeze the bread gently in your fist so it is damp but not dripping. Left sopping it makes a mixture too slack to shape; wrung out dry it defeats the purpose entirely.

Put both minces in a large bowl with the soaked bread, the grated onion, the grated garlic, the egg, the fine salt, the ground peppercorns and the dill.

Mix with your hand until evenly combined and no streaks of bread remain.

Lift the whole mass out and slap it back down into the bowl twenty or thirty times.

This is the step people skip. Slapping the mixture makes the meat proteins bind to each other, and without it the patties crack open and shed juice the moment they hit the pan.

Chill the mixture for 20 minutes so it firms enough to handle.

Wet your hands and shape the mixture into eight ovals about 2cm thick, smoothing every crack closed with your palm.

Roll each one in the dried breadcrumbs to coat all over.

Heat the butter and the oil in a wide frying pan over medium heat, until the butter foams and the foam begins to subside.

Fry the kotlety for 4-5 minutes a side, until deeply browned and crusted.

Move them as little as possible. Turning them repeatedly tears the crust off before it has set, and the crust is what keeps them from drying out.

Pour the 3 tbsp of water into the pan around them and clamp on a lid at once.

Steam over low heat for 5 minutes, until they are cooked through and a thermometer in the centre reads 71C/160F.

Take the lid off and let any remaining water boil away, about 30 seconds, so the crust crisps back up.

Rest them for 3 minutes before serving with mashed potato or buckwheat.