Sweet potato, chickpea and hemp seed veggie burgers

There have  been some great veggie burger posts in the last week. Angela talked about preparing and freezing large quantities of burgers, on Oh She Glows. Gena talked about building good veggie burgers, on Choosing Raw and on Food 52.

Just so we're clear, this post isn't in quite the same category. I just have a recipe.

It is, though, a recipe that I'm rather happy with. I really liked these burgers. I liked the sweet potato base, which dominated the flavours without over-dominating them. I liked the chickpeas and hemp seeds, with their joint benefits for flavour and texture. I liked the smoked paprika, the kale, and even the onion. I really liked the oats.

I'm hoping that you might like them too.

I have no doubt that these draw on a number of veggie burger recipes, including those I've seen online and those I've eaten (and made) previously. The ingredient list really wrote itself, and would be easily adaptable to your own tastes and pantry items if desired. I imagine that swapping out the chickpeas for other legumes, the oats for other grains, and the hemp seeds for other seeds would all work well. 

For now, though, here is my version.

Sweet potato, chickpea and hemp seed veggie burgers

Makes 10 burger patties

Vegan

Delicious by themselves and quite incredible when paired with tomato flavours (fresh tomato, tomato relish, or tomato sauce)

Print recipe

Ingredients

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and roughly diced (mine weighed 675g in total with peel and 475g peeled)

1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas (1 tin)

1/2 cup rolled oats, processed into oat flour (or 1/2 cup commercial oat flour or flour of choice)

1/4 cup rolled oats

1/2 onion, diced

~1/3 cup chopped kale (I used about 8 small kale leaves picked from my garden; I imagine this would equate to 4 large kale leaves)

1 tsp chia seeds soaked in 1/3 cup water (mine soaked from the time I steamed the sweet potato)

1 - 2 tbsp hemp seeds (or sesame seeds, if you don't have hemp)

2 tsp smoked paprika

1 - 2 tsp dried oregano

~1/2 tsp salt

Few good cracks black pepper

Tomatoes or tomato relish, to serve

Method

Steam your sweet potato until tender and then set aside to cool (I steamed mine early in the day and then left it in the fridge until the evening).

While the sweet potato is cooling, set your chia seeds to soak and process the 1/2 cup oats into oat flour using a food processor (if using).

When the sweet potato is cooled, roughly mash it and the chickpeas in a large bowl. Add the oat flour  (or flour of choice) and oats and mix through. Add the remaining ingredients and mix through.

Allow the mixture to stand in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, or up to several hours.

When the mixture is ready, preheat your oven to 180'C and line two baking trays with baking paper. 

Shape the mixture into approximately 10 patties. Bake on the prepared baking trays for 30 minutes, or until crispy.

Serve in burger buns, with rice, or simply with salad. Tomato accompaniment is highly recommended.

I found these re-heated well, which can sometimes be a challenge with veggie burgers. The texture is softer when they're warmed in the microwave, but the patties still held together and the outside retained a certain crispiness. The flavours, if anything, improved with time.

All in all? I think I will be making these again.

Do you have a favourite or 'go to' veggie burger? 

Submitted to Ricki's Wellness Weekend

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Fortnightly Fitness Fridays - What I've enjoyed these 2012 Olympic Games

This year is the first in many that I have been able to watch the Olympic games guilt free.

Source - Nigel Chadwick (creative commons)

During the 2000 games, I was in my final year of highschool. In Australia, the academic year runs to the calendar year, with exams around November. Thus, exam study took precedence over Olympic game watching.

In 2004, I was in my Honours year at university. Thesis writing took precedence over Olympic game watching.

In 2008, I was 6 months off finishing my PhD. My evenings were spent looking at Word, SPSS or Endnote (or moving between them in a demented dance), rather than watching TV.

So 2012, you see, has been quite welcome. Our PVR has been recording Olympic events virtually non-stop, and I can watch as much as I like. Or at least, as much as I like around work, other obligations, washing, cooking, and cleaning. So you know, a bit. A lot of it has been watched on fast forward.

Source - Nigel Chadwick (creative commons)

One of the things I've found hard, though, is the Australia media coverage of the events. This was worst in week one. According to the media, we were going to win lots of medals in the swimming. As it turns out, we didn't win as many medals as usual in the swimming, and those we did win tended not to be gold.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who makes it to the Olympics has worked incredibly hard and has already proved their worth. If you place a medal, any medal, that should be a bonus. But I appreciate not everyone thinks that way, athletes included.

Australia has moved up the medal tally quite a bit the last few days, but it's still unlikely that we will reach our placing in 2008 (which was sixth). I can't say I mind. Here are some of my highlights of the games, gold and non-gold, and Australian and non-Australian.

• The 10,000m women's race. The winner, Tirunesh Dibaba from Ethopia, finished in 30 minutes and 20.75 seconds. That's an average pace of 19.86 km / hr. Amazing.

• Sanya Richards-Ross, from the USA, winning the 400m women's race. She finished third in Beijing but was clearly deserving of gold in London.

• Belinda Snell making a shot from about halfway down the basketball court, on the final buzzer, to take Australia to draw France in the women's basketball qualifying round. The fact that Australia lost in the overtime game mattered not at all. That shot was amazing.

• Lauren Mitchell, a Western Australian gymnast, finishing fifth on the women's gymnastics floor finals. She was delightfully composed and happy with her fifth place finish (no resentment or bitter spirits from her). She seemed to recognise that she did her best and that was what mattered.

• Gabrielle Douglas, from America, winning the all around women's gymnastics finals. Her background is inspiring and her moves were amazing.

• Sally Pearson winning gold in the 100m women's hurdles. She is such an inspiring athlete. I also loved that the second place winner, American Dawn Harper, seemed genuinely happy for Sally and with her own placing.

• The men's qualifying round for the pole vaulting. Steve Hooker, the Australian vaulter, is fun to watch at any time - he seems so casual and laid back, but then speeds into action when he competes. For the qualifying round, a team of vaulters, from different countries, won over the officials to allow 14 athletes through instead of 12, many of them after just one jump. I loved that.

• The 'Team GB' crew. Britain has pulled out all the stops for these Olympics, and has performed admirably both in the sporting events and in coordinating the games. On a few occasions, I've been tempted to switch allegiance and pull out my UK passport!

Source - Daniel Ochoa De Olza

I know the games aren't finished yet, but it's been a great two weeks thus far.

On a final side note, have you seen this page from the BBC? You put in your height and weight and it tells you which athletes your proportions are most like. Seriously fun!

What have you enjoyed, if you're watching the Olympics?

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Vegan banana bread cake

I know that banana bread isn't the most exciting product out there. It's been done many times before. It's even been done by me before.

Yawn.

The thing is, though, this banana bread is more like a cake.

A seriously delicious, almost fudgy cake. It uses non-dairy spread (or margarine or butter) instead of oil, creamed with brown sugar to give a fluffy start to the mixture. There are 3 bananas. Chia seeds add an extra punch to the batter. The resulting product is firmly in the 'dessert' category, but stands alone with no need for icing.

If you did want some topping, though, warm toffee syrup would go down rather well. It's that kind of bread cake.

I made this some time ago and had a mini panic when I lost the scrap of people on which I'd scrawled the recipe. Even though it's only banana bread, I didn't want to lose it. I wanted to be able to recreate it exactly, even though I struggle to follow recipes exactly (thus why this banana bread isn't the same as my last banana bread!). Happily, I found the scrap of paper, and I hereby declare this my new banana bread recipe.

Banana bread cake

Adapted from my previous banana bread

Vegan

Makes 1 loaf cake

Print recipe

Ingredients

1/4 cup non-dairy spread (or margarine or butter)

3/4 cup brown sugar

3 medium ripe bananas, roughly mashed

1/4 cup non-dairy milk

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp chia seeds

1 1/2 cups plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

Method

Preheat your oven to 180'C and prepare a loaf tin.

Beat the non-dairy spread and brown sugar on medium speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes.

Add the mashed bananas, milk, vanilla and chia seeds, and mix to combine.

Add in the remaining dry ingredients and mix well to combine. 

Bake for ~40 minutes, until golden.

If I can save our over-ripe bananas from frozen banana soft serve (questionable), we will definitely have more of this appearing in our house before too long.

What's your view on banana bread? Or are there other 'stand by' baking recipes in your house?

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Pre-wedding vegan high tea

So...our wedding is coming up at a rather startling rate.

I think I've mentioned previously that the wedding itself will be quite small. Neither of us could cope with the idea of a large-scale event, and so we are keeping the guest list to our immediate families only - a grant total of 15 people (including us!).

In light of this, I wanted to celebrate with some of my friends in advance of the day, in a way that would have less attention on me and more scope for casual and one-on-one interactions. The solution: a pre-wedding high tea.

When I decided on this, some months back, I set about trying to find a suitable high tea location. I didn't want one of the fancy hotels, because I wanted children to be able to attend and guests to be able to mingle if desired. I nearly booked one of the better known (non-hotel) high tea providers in Perth, which has a great location by the river, but I kept hearing poor reports on the food.

Then my searching turned up Heavenly Plate Cafe. This is a vegan and vegetarian restaurant that primarily does main meals, but they also do vegan cakes and slices. Reviews on Urbanspoon and elsewhere are positive. I asked if they could do high tea, they said yes, and my location was decided.

I am so glad I did find them. We arrived to three beautifully set tables and the wait staff coped brilliantly with our large group, which included 20 adults, 3 children, and 2 babies (plus prams).

The afternoon started with a tea menu that dazzled me with its choices. I had the Ginger Twist, which was everything the description suggests (and very good), but was also intrigued by the Chocolate Mint Truffle.

The food was also wonderful.

I wish I'd asked for a summary of what the plates included, but as I didn't, the following is my interpretation of the flavours. Each three-tier stand was for sharing across two people, so the serves were generous.

The bottom plate included mini cups of tomato soup, which were beautifully flavoured - slightly sweet, slightly salty, with plenty of tomato flavour and a smattering of herbs (I think basil). The soup was well received by everyone and managed to be warm without burning hot, which was impressive when considering they dished up 23 individual cups.

The bottom tier also included sandwiches, which consisted of salad and a faux meat that reportedly tasted "just like chicken". In fact, my sister insisted it was chicken, until I explained to her that everything was vegan and chicken was thus impossible (!). I skipped over the sandwiches to allow room for sweets, which means I can't comment on these myself, but they certainly looked impressive. In hindsight I should have taken my share home, but I was so dazzled by the sweeter offerings that sandwiches paled in comparison.

Moving on to those sweeter offerings, the middle plate included vanilla cupcakes with very cheerful yellow icing, mini fruit tartlets, and mini cheesecake-like layered puddings.

It was a very good tier.

The cupcakes were soft and fluffy, and their icing was dense and fluffy. Definitely no hint of vegan ingredients.

The mini fruit tarts tasted exactly like the non-vegan variety I enjoyed as a child, and may have reignited a love for fruit tart products.

The highlight for me, though, was the mini cheesecakes. I do wish I had asked about these (I was distracted with socialising), as they were the talk of several tables. The base had tones of ginger, and managed to be soft and sufficiently textured all at the same time. The middle, 'creamy' layer reminded me of ricotta cheesecake: light and sweet and perfectly offset against both the base and the fruit topping. There was some debate over the flavours of the fruit topping, but the consensus was passionfruit and mango. Other than Mr Bite (who appeared at the end and tried some) and the three children, I think these were universally liked. They were certainly liked by me.

On the top, we had scones, served with raspberry jam and coconut-based cream. The scones were of the 'dense' scone variety, in the sense that they were crumbly and solid rather than soft and airy. I liked them very much. The coconut cream was also impressive, and was the one feature that was clearly vegan. Everything else could have passed for a non-vegan version of the dish in question, but the coconut cream was novel and very cleverly done. People seemed to like it, and the jam was thick and very much full of fruit.

Being me, there was a certain amount of anxiety in the morning of the event (would people enjoy themselves? would the cafe work out? would the food be okay? would people hate the vegan options? would things go smoothly?). Once I got there, though, there was no need for worry and Heavenly Plate did a truly wonderful job with the catering. My non-vegan (and mostly non-vegetarian!) friends seemed genuinely impressed with the food, and given how large the serves were, there were surprisingly few leftovers.

All in all, it was a wonderful afternoon and I am very grateful to my friends and family for facilitating it. The food, the venue, the people, the conversations, the time celebrating with friends...all of it was fantastic.

Heavenly Plate Cafe is at 899 Canning Highway, Applecross, Perth, Western Australia.

Tell me - have you been to any high teas?

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Triple chocolate product review: Orgran vegan chocolate mousse and Whittaker's Rum & Raisin and Dark Almond chocolate blocks

It's been a while since I've done a product review post. Today, I'm making up for lost time with a triple chocolate hit.

I'm a little excited.

First up is Orgran's vegan (and gluten free) chocolate mousse.

I'm not sure why I haven't tried this before, given my self-proclaimed love of chocolate mousse and my efforts to create a fluffy vegan version. I suppose I didn't believe that a packaged mousse mix could generate edible results.

I was wrong.

People, this was fluffy. I have no idea how the Orgran people managed it, but the texture of this mousse defied the vegan ingredient list and suggested egg white and/or gelatin. It was amazing.

As for the ingredient list?

It is a little on the long side, but free of animal products, soy, nuts, genetically modified ingredients, gluten, wheat and yeast.

Making the mousse is as simple as adding 1 cup of water to the provided powder, beating with an electric beater for 3 minutes, and then chilling in the fridge for as long as you desire (you can even eat the mousse without chilling if you want). It was also enjoyable from the freezer and would make an impressive cake filling or topping.

The mix generates 5 serves, which are low in energy (87 calories / serve), fat (0.3g / serve), and protein (0.5g / serve). In other words, this isn't a nutrient-providing dessert, but it is enjoyable if you're after something light but chocolatey.

My only complaint with this mousse was the flavour. The taste was of low-cocoa milk chocolate (it reminded me of Sweet William's dairy free milk chocolate) and my taste buds wanted something with a little more oomph. However, that may be easily rectified by adding a tablespoon of cocoa to the powder, which I will try next time I make this.

For now, chocolate avocado pudding might win in terms of dark chocolatey taste, but this most definitely wins in terms of fluffy mousse texture.

From mousse, we move to the Whittaker's chocolate range, and in particular their 50% cocoa Rum & Raisin block and 62% cocoa Dark Almond block.

I have been experimenting with Whittaker's chocolate lately, due to Lindt's insistence on adding dairy to all of their flavoured Excellence blocks. Sadly, Whittaker's doesn't provide chilli as a flavour, or coconut (edit - they do have coconut, and I have even tried it, but I was thinking of dark chocolate as I wrote this!), but rum & raisin and almond seemed worthy of trying.

The rum and raisin block is a sweet dark chocolate, with only 50% cocoa and a decent smattering of raisins (26% of the ingredients). The flavours are rounded out by gentle rum tones, vanilla, maple syrup, and a hint of berries.

It is very easy to eat, and very much a 'snack-y' chocolate.

Rum & raisin on the left; almond on the right

The almond block goes a little deeper. The cocoa percentage rises to 62% and the taste reflects that: it is less sweet (although still somewhat sweet), mellow, and very chocolatey. Hannah has done this range poetic justice with her reviews of the 62% mocha, 62% caramel, 62% dark cacao, and 47% peanut blocks, but for this block - well, I really couldn't convince my taste buds to offer me anything other than "chocolate".

Perhaps this is because the chocolate is offset, rather beautifully, by whole roasted almonds. I am not usually a fan of fruit and nut chocolate bars, because the fruit and nuts are often chopped too small to feature and thus manage to detract from the chocolate experience rather than add to it.

These nuts definitely feature, and they definitely add to the chocolate experience.

Every mouthful delivers a contrast between chocolate and whole almonds, in an experience that is akin to eating chocolate coated nuts. I like chocolate coated nuts, so I was rather pleased.

All in all, two vegan chocolate wins for Whittaker's (and at lower cost than Lindt...), and I can see these entering my chocolate rotation.

What chocolate products have you enjoyed lately? Have you tried any of the above?

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Purple carrot wins, and losses

Johanna should have a prize for her smoothie ingredient guess of roast carrots.

The ingredient list didn't include roast carrots, but it did include purple carrots.

Unfortunately, though, the story of this smoothie is a sad one.

You know those times when kitchen creation is driven purely by imagination? By an idea that sticks in your mind, an ingredient list that wafts to you, and a method that just comes together seemlessly?

Those kitchen moments can be magical.

But here's the thing. The magic is a bit dependent on the resulting product/s turning out. Otherwise it's somewhat of a let down - you have a delicious dish in your imagination, but not in front of you.

No one wants that.

For several weeks, I have been thinking about making soft carrot cake biscuits (cookies). Not just any carrot cake biscuits, though, but purple carrot cake biscuits.

I had such grand plans for them. They were to be beautifully purple, slightly sweet, suitable for breakfast or snack time, and firm and chewy all at the same time.

The ingredient list came to me in stages, as is right and proper for imagination-based cooking. It included coconut flour. Oats. Puffed millet. Chia. Purple carrots, of course. Pineapple juice and some crushed pineapple, almond milk, vanilla, mixed spice, agave, baking soda.

The mixture was dazzling in its purple-ness.

 The pre-baked biscuits were a bit odd, but still held promise.

But then.

This happened.

I know. I'm laughing too. Green purple cookies did not enter my imagination.

Worse than the colour (which could be viewed as odd but interesting) was the texture. Rather than firm and chewy, I had something that was both crumbly and too moist. Who knew that could happen?

In hindsight, making up a recipe and playing with a new flour (coconut flour) may not have been the wisest combination.

The taste also fell short of my dreams. These biscuits were edible but they weren't quite sweet enough, and they sat at the intersection between savoury and sweet in an unappealing kind of way.

I guess magic can't happen every time. Lesson learnt: never count your biscuits before they're baked.

On the plus side, the leftover purple carrot gave me a great smoothie, and my imagination has something to keep pondering. I also had some purple carrot success (thank goodness!) when I adapted Min's recipe for carrot, nut and date balls.

I followed Min's recipe closely but used one small orange carrot and one small purple carrot, instead of one medium orange carrot; added a couple of extra dates (14-15 instead of 12); omitted the coconut oil; and added a few tablespoons of oats.

Thankfully, the outcome was good enough to go some way to reducing the biscuit disappointment. These balls were enjoyable from the fridge and even better from the freezer, and I will definitely be making them again.

The biscuits, on the other hand...not to be repeated in a hurry.

Any recent flops in your kitchen?!

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