Monday, July 11, 2011

(Almost) Vegan Feast – Part 1/2


I originally intended this blog to be experimental; as I was experimenting with my cooking, I wanted to expose both my successes and failures.
However, as time went by two things happened; one, I couldn’t admit to be failing – I liked looking as if I know what I’m doing, and to think people are actually cooking according to my recipes. The second thing was that I actually gotten a lot better, after years of seeing the angst and disbelief on my sisters’ and mother’s faces when I cooked, I finally reached a point that people more or less trust me being in the kitchen (usually strangers, I must admit, and I just show them some pictures from the blog) and even more importantly, the results are great more often than not.
Now you’d probably expect this exposition to come before a glorious failure, I know I would, BUT, not this time.
Our hosts took a day off and went to the beach, which meant we got to cook for ourselves. I wanted to test a new sauce I came up with (wait for part 2) and Dani craved for some sort of vegetarian ‘meatball’. I remembered this vegan beet burger I had somewhere in Oslo, (which I only got to taste very briefly, cause after my sister discovered it’s way better than her dish she abandoned it in favor of mine).
Dani was in charge of the burger buns (the not so vegan part of the meal) and despite a series of mistakes and some confusion about the quantities, they came out great (I can’t give a precise recipe, since there was nothing precise about it, but I’ll make them again real soon)
I made the beet burgers and the mysterious first course (which I forgot about and was eventually eaten as dessert).


Vegan beet burgers:


Ingredients (For about 6 patties):

3 Large beets, diced very little.
2 Medium onions, chopped.
½ a cup rice (I used white, but brown would also work).
1 cup cooked dry beans (I used pinto beans, but white, black or kidney – anything would work. You can use canned beans).
1 Hot green pepper chopped (or dry).
2 tbs soy sauce.
2 tbs ketchup (I like ketchup)
2 Cardamom seeds.
5 cloves of garlic, crushed.
Chopped parsley.
1 tbs coriander seeds, crushed.
2 tbs sunflower seeds. (Not necessary)
2 tbs flour.
Olive oil.


Preparation:

- In a large pan, sauté the onions in olive oil. When translucent, add the chili, beets, cardamom and soy, and cover. Stir every few minutes, if it’s too dry and starting to burn (guess what happened to me) add a little water. Cook until the beets are soft, takes about 35 minutes.
- Meanwhile, cook the rice, it doesn’t really matter how much water you add, but you want the rice slightly overcooked.
- Mash the rice and beans together.
- Add ketchup, garlic and coriander and mix.
- Mix in the beets, parsley and sunflower seeds.
- Add flour, I only had to use about 1 tbs, it depends on how wet the mix is, start with very little and keep adding until you can comfortably create a patty that doesn’t fall apart.
- Heat very little oil in a skillet, it has to be very hot, fry the burgers about 3 minutes on each side.

2 comments:

  1. Made it yesterday! What an amazing Dish! Finally found the best Veggy-Burger, after searching for a long time... Thanks from Germany! :)

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  2. Whats even better is real burgers made with ground beef mixed with onion soup mix

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