Broad Bean Burgers

From Plenty, Yotam Ottolenghi, Ebury Press, 2010.

I didn’t expect to find a recipe for burgers in Plenty but there it was and as it came from Yotam Ottolenghi I guessed that it would be a good one—and I’m a fan of burgers.

There was a fair amount of separate little cooking jobs before the burgers could be put together.

Firstly the broad beans had to blanched, cooled and carefully removed of their skins—a reasonably long process but rather pleasing to do if you aren’t in a hurry.

Then some spice seeds (cumin, coriander and fennel) were dry roasted and ground in a mortar and pestle.

Spinach was wilted in a pan with some olive oil. It was then squeezed as dry as possible and chopped.

Potatoes were boiled until tender. They were drained and the broad beans were added to them with the ground seeds, some chopped green chilli, chopped garlic, turmeric, some olive oil and seasoning. This was mashed with a potato masher. It was only mashed until it was generally broken up. The spinach was added, some chopped coriander and breadcrumbs. The final ingredient was an egg. It was then all mixed together.

The mixture was formed into patties and placed in the refrigerator for half an hour. 

The burgers were then fried.

I’m sure these were not intended to be lost in a bread roll. They were wonderfully flavoured and this flavour mix would be somewhat lost placed in bread. I decided to serve it on a plate with the standard three vegies. A bit dull I suppose but I wanted to just enjoy the burgers without any fuss surrounding them.

These are definitely ones I would go back to. I guess they would rate tops on my burger list.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔✔ 

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔