I recently cooked a pretty awesome meal, if I do say so myself. I borrowed a cookbook from the library, Veggie Burgers Every Which Way, and actually ended up making two recipes from the cookbook.
I’ve made several versions of homemade veggie burgers or patties, and I’m still looking for my favorite. This one was pretty good. I tried the Quinoa, Red Bean, and Walnut burgers. I was flipping through the book and the author, Lukas Volger, said something that really hit home with me (sorry, quinoa lovers!) – he said he often finds quinoa a little too grassy for his taste.
These patties are made with quinoa, red beans, walnuts, and a steamed potato. The steamed potato is his binder in many of his vegan recipes. They’re flavoried with ginger, scallions, and cilantro. (I used cilantro because I had some, the recipe calls for parsley.) True – the ginger does cut through some of the grassiness of the quinoa.
The other recipe I made from the cookbook was the red cabbage slaw. Actually, I started with the recipe and kept going. This is simply shredded red cabbage and dressed it with rice vinegar, a little toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, ginger, scallions, and brown rice syrup. This was a sweet and sour cole slaw, and it was delicious, and the leftovers were great as the vinegar kept wilting the cabbage.
Round out this meal with roasted sweet potato wedges, tied together with more grated ginger. All of this was a little time consuming, but in the end it was worth it. Actually, it was most worth it when I had the leftovers for lunch and the work was already done!
Veggie Burgers Every Which Way has been returned to the library, and I might check it out again if I’m in the mood to try a different kind of patty.
Excellent top photo! I've found I enjoy red quinoa over regular. Most of all, I prefer someone else making it! Anyway, timely post:
ReplyDeletehttp://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/come-back-veggie-burger-all-is-forgiven/?ref=dining
That sounds like a rockin' burger combo. I bet the nuts make it super tasty. The whole meal looks perfect. Love the photos!
ReplyDeleteThis looks great! I'm a quinoa fan but haven't had it in burger form, mostly because I can't imagine it sticking together. Interesting to use a potato!
ReplyDeleteI love coleslaw, and the purple looks so nice against the sweet potato hash. Never thought to eat it with ginger.
I agree..great photos!
ReplyDeleteYour burger looks so perfect, and sounds very good. I need to go to our library and see if they have any vegan cookbooks that I could check out.
The coleslaw is so pretty. I've never been a big fan of coleslaw, but I've also never made it myself. I'll have to make some soon after seeing yours. :)