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| Recipe of the week... ... Vegan Bean Burgers! |
Ingredients: 400g tin chickpeas
or beans, 300g root vegetables, 2 garlic cloves, a splash of oil, 2 slices of
bread, some form of herbs and seasoning, and salt and pepper.
Recipe makes: 4 burgers (quite
cool – you can actually freeze these burgers uncooked and then bake them from
frozen another time – so you potentially could up the quantities of ingredients
here and prepare more than 4 burgers... then freeze some for another day!)
Time taken: 1 hour total (half
an hour to make and half an hour to bake).
Hi readers,
How’s it going today, with this wonderful
life we lead? Are you battling the Tuesday blues and powering ahead with the
working week? Or are you necking wine and counting the seconds til Friday 5pm??
Either way – I hope you’re keeping your spirits up and thinking positively!
My Tuesday so far, readers, has
actually been one of note. Today is the day that I passed my driving theory
test. For real. After a week of patchy Highway Code revision and bleary, late night
attempts at practicing hazard perception.. I passed the test and walked out
with a certificate in my hand.
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| Yuhhhhhh! |
Not exactly a fun week of my
life spent prepping for the theory test.. but it’s over and done with now! I may
never need to know so much about road signs or stopping distances ever again –
I can just get on with learning to drive a car. That small thing. Phew.
Today, though, besides passing
my theory, I’m having the kind of day where it’s possible I might be invisible.
Know what I mean? People have been merrily pushing past me and the traffic
lights don’t change for me anymore and my emails go unanswered. You’re familiar
with this kind of day, readers, where at times you question whether you died in
the night and it’s all been make believe since then?
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| That kind of day. |
One good thing about friends and
family is that, whether they love you or hate you at the time, often you’re
found starring in their show. I had a fabulous friend up visiting from London
this weekend and was most occupied for a couple of days, forcing her to be
among squirrels at the Botanic Gardens (“rats with bushy tails”).. showing her
Sheffield’s impressive waterway, the River Sheaf (entirely by accident)..
taking her out for brunch at the best place in town (Tamper, of course). Was most
nice.
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| If ever you're in Sheffield: Tamper |
And we talked and talked and
talked and, aside from the many tourist attractions of Sheffield, I guess I was
a star in her show this weekend. She, certainly, was the star in my show. With long
flowing hair which I long for, and three months of girl gossip, and tales of
life living down in the Big Smoke. Sometimes, I think you just need your
friends around to make you feel like the Hampshire swan you are. I hope,
readers, that you’re thinking of someone now who is that friend you have that DEFINITELY
brings out the swan in you. Maybe make plans to meet up with them and star in each
other’s shows, sometime soon?
Anyway, readers, I feel I’ve
gone off on a tangent. I’m writing to you today to share a wonderful recipe,
concocted by myself and Floss this weekend, for Vegan Bean Burgers! This recipe
came about totally on the fly – devised by two vegetarians with polar opposite
tastes in food. Neither of us really knew what we wanted for tea on Saturday,
and we definitely didn’t want anything that the other person wanted… and
somehow bean burgers won out.
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| And we have a winner! |
1. Heat
the oven to 200C.
2. Peel
and roughly chop your root vegetables.
ChefBeHere Top Tip:
We used some slightly mouldy carrots that I’ve had in the fridge since December
and they worked a treat! Any veg you need to use up – now is the time to do
something with them and save them from going to waste. Aside from carrots, you
could use butternut squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes or even parsnip in your
burgers.
3. Tip
your veg into a pan and boil the kettle, then fill the pan with water and heat
for around 20 minutes.
4. While
your veg are boiling, you can be using a grater to grate your slices of bread
into breadcrumbs.
5. You
can also use this time to drain and rinse your tin of chickpeas or beans. Tip
your chickpeas or beans into a bowl, and season with salt and pepper.
ChefBeHere Top
Tip: This recipe presented the perfect opportunity for me to use up a tin of mixed
beans, which have been sat in the cupboard for the best part of a year. If you’d
prefer to use a specific bean, though, bigger beans such as borlotti, kidney or
butterbeans work well.
6. Either
press or finely chop your 2 cloves of garlic, and add to the bowl along with some
herbs (such as coriander or Herbes de Provence) and seasoning (such as ground
cumin, paprika or chilli flakes).
7. Use
a fork to mash the contents of your bowl into a flavoursome bean paste.
8. Then,
once a stab test show your root veg have softened, take them off the heat and
drain away the water.
9. Leave
to cool for a few minutes and then use either a fork or a proper masher,
depending on the force required, to mash your vegetables into a pulp.
10. Add
your mashed bean mix to the mashed veg mix, and combine everything together
into one big burger mix.
11. Then,
use your spoon to roughly divide the mix into quarters, and roll up your
sleeves! Use your hands to roll the mix into four burger-sized balls.
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| Like so |
ChefBeHere Top
Tip: After this step, as were feeling quite hungry, me and Floss went
off-recipe and decided to fry our burgers in a pan to speed up the cooking
process. This was an awful decision. They stuck, they burned, they came apart..
and so then we decided to grill them! What you need to do, readers, is just put
them in the oven like the recipe says to do. That is all.
12. For
those of you not careering off-recipe, prepare a baking tray by brushing the
tray lightly with cooking oil, to cover.
13. Roll
your burger balls in the breadcrumbs, until they’re evenly coated with crumbs,
and then place them on your baking tray and flatten the balls slightly.
14. Brush
the top of each burger with a light coating of cooking oil, and then safely
transport your bean burgers into the oven to cook for cook for 20-30 minutes.
ChefBeHere Top
Tip: Assess the chaos around you – time to get those dishes done!! Remember to
turn your burgers over midway through cooking, so that both sides will brown in
the oven. Pour yourself a glass of wine.. you’re almost there now.
15. Once
your burgers are cooked through, smelling great and browned on both sides, then
you can carefully remove them from the oven and turn the oven off. Serve them
up and tuck in!
ChefBeHere Top
Tip: Myself and Floss served our burgers with sweet potato fries and salad – a very
tasty combination. Alternatively, you could serve them in burger buns perhaps,
with fried onions and houmous to top? Or you could serve your burgers with a
rice salad and corn on the cob, and pretend they’ve come straight from the
barbecue in summertime?? Anything goes!
Adapted from a BBC Good Food recipe found here.
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| Floss with food |
And that, readers, is all there is to it. A fun, messy, low-skill
recipe. One that you can sort on the night while chatting away (glugging wine) –
without the need for any preparation in advance and possibly without you even
needing to buy ingredients in. What do you think?? If you’ve tried out the
recipe – how did it turn out? Did you like these beautiful bean burgers,
readers? If you haven’t had a go yet, does this recipe tempt you to try out homemade
vegan burgers? Let me know! All your thoughts – fire away with them, readers!
I, for one, thought that these burgers tasted lush. Things
were a little stressful in the kitchen, when we (the wine) decided to veer
off-recipe and change things up a bit – I wouldn’t advocate doing that at all –
but it all came good in the end! We sat down to a really tasty, colourful and
healthy tea. And a real plateful! There was no skimping on portions.
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| There certainly was not |
I had a wonderful weekend with Floss, readers, and whether
or not you feature vegan bean burgers I do hope that you get to have an equally
fab time with one of your friends soon. Don’t hesitate! Anytime now you could
be the swan that doesn’t make it to the other side of the motorway.. just
saying. Live for the day, every damn day.
Hang in there with the rest of your working week, readers, and
high five to anyone that gives this recipe a whirl – wishing you major good luck
in the kitchen!!
Mash safely,
Hayley
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| Go swan! Run free! |
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