The recipe: no. 21, "Korma, Courgette and Chickpea Burgers with Sweetcorn, Pepper and Avocado Salsa"
Phew. That's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? It's back to my folder of recipes from friends and family for this week's Random Kitchen, although I can't promise anything quite as retro and, well, three-dimensional as Week 36's Stuffed Rice Salad.
The chosen dish this time round comes from a selection of recipes my mum e-mailed me shortly after I landed in Germany, post-graduation but pre-finding-a-job, in the hope that I might learn to stand on my own two feet in the kitchen. While it's true that I immediately did better than on my previous stint on Teutonic turf (a university year abroad in Hamburg where I primarily survived on pasta, pizza and takeaway döner), and some of the recipes she imparted are still in my armoury even now - most notably a "Hungarian"-style pasta sauce that mainly involves a chopped Mattessons sausage and fucktons of cheese - several of them remain sadly untouched.
And this was among them until the fickle finger of random.org decided otherwise. Hurrah! The internets inform me that this is an Ainsley recipe from his BBQ book, which leads me to assume that my mum must have snipped it out of a magazine at some point, because my folks aren't exactly mad-keen summertime grillers. In any case, it's a vegetarian dish that promises to be both interesting and substantial - I'm looking at you, Kafka - and Ainsley claims the "burgers" are just as good (or at least not significantly worse) cooked in a frying pan rather than on a charcoal grill. Since it's a foggy day in late October and thus not exactly barbie weather, let's see if he's right.
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| Presented without comment |
The prep: Lots to buy in here, since this is effectively two recipes in one. For the burgers, I'll need courgettes, carrots and crunchy peanut butter - for some reason, I opt for the "whole nut" version of the latter even though I know it's basically useless for spreading on Ryvita, which will be the fate of the rest of the jar - as well as some curry paste (the recipe claims curry powder is also fine, but I suspect the stickiness of the paste will come in handy for binding) and wholemeal breadcrumbs. A new Asda has just opened in our corner of Lewisham and they haven't quite worked out the levels of demand for their in-store bakery yet, so reduced-price multigrain buns are readily available for breadcrumbing purposes.
Looking at the salsa recipe, I realise I have precisely one of the ingredients in stock (seasoning excluded), and that's red chillies, which live on permanent freezer standby for moments like this. As such, my shopping list is extended to include a small tin of sweetcorn, a large red pepper, a lemon, a small red onion and two small ripe avocados. Whatever else may happen, we'll be hitting our five-a-day target with this meal alone.
The making: Right then. There's quite a lot of fine chopping, dicing and grating involved in the instructions for this one, but I'm going to use the food processor as much as possible. Partly because I almost removed the end of my finger while hacking away at an onion the other night, partly because I suspect the burgers will benefit from a more consistent ingredient texture anyway, and partly because, well, I'm lazy.
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| Grease me up |
A chopped onion is fried in butter and oil for five minutes, then a crushed garlic clove is added along with two shredded courgettes and 225g of shredded carrot. I don't know why one vegetable merits a specific weight measurement and the other doesn't. Is there such a thing as a standard courgette size? I think not, Ainsley. After a further five minutes of cooking, this mixture is left to cool. A drained tin of chickpeas is blended in the food processor (the only time I'm actually meant to use it in this recipe) and stirred into the cooled vegetable mixture along with - deep breath - 75g of the freshly blitzed breadcrumbs, a couple of teaspoons of the curry paste, a couple of healthy dollops of the not-so-buttery peanut butter, an egg yolk, and some seasoning.
Once nicely mixed to form a sticky coherent mass, this is shaped into "four or more burgers". If I was doing them on the grill then I might go for four, but in a pan I imagine they'll need to be a bit smaller if they're not to fall apart while being manhandled later on, so half a dozen it is. These are floured (my idea, not the recipe's - I've learned from bitter experience) and left in the fridge to chill for "at least two hours" lest they risk disintegration.
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| The world's most disappointing box of Krispy Kreme donuts |
Meanwhile, I prepare the salsa, which simply involves chopping the pepper and onion, de-stoning and dicing the avocados, then stirring them all together with the drained canned sweetcorn, the chopped red chillies, and the zest and juice of a lemon. Couldn't be simpler. (It's worth noting that the recipe does offer an alternative to the salsa, namely a "passata sauce", but that sounds incredibly dull compared with this colourful effort.)
Now all that's left is to remove the chilled veggie patties from the fridge and carefully pan-fry them for about 4 minutes on each side - mm, more butter and oil! - until they're ready to be served. They're quite substantial in their own right, so I decide that a handful of potato wedges will do in terms of a side dish. Other than that, the only question is how to present it all - I take something of a scattergun approach to serving the salsa, since it's all going to get smushed together with forkfuls of burger in the end, though I'm starting to see why this recipe would lend itself to the BBQ bun option of "just stuff it all in there".
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| Wedgetarianism |
The eating: There have been some right old hits and misses in the 43 weeks of the Random Kitchen to date, so it's a relief to be able to keep things simple and say: this is great.
I mean, it's not perfect. For a start, I can see how a chargrilled finish to the outsides of the burgers would improve them in a way that pan-frying can't really replicate. And although the various binding agents (egg, peanut butter, curry paste) and the hours of chilling mean the patties don't fall apart while being cooked, they do basically disintegrate as soon as they come into contact with a fork, which suggests their deployment at your summer barbecue might swiftly degenerate into "here you go, veggie friends, have some mush in a bun!". This might have been even more true if I'd chopped the patty ingredients myself instead of letting the Kenwood take the strain (although a more rustic burger consistency could have been a price worth paying - they're perhaps a bit too smooth and samey as they stand).
These are all very minor quibbles, though. The main thing is the flavours are great, both the burgers and the accompaniment. Between the warm curry nuttiness of the patty mix and the sharp chilli and lemon kick of the salsa (plus the sweet chilli sauce we end up liberally applying to the allegedly spiced potato wedges), this is a veritable explosion on the taste buds - and with all the elements of spice and seasoning firmly in the chef's hands, you can make the individual components as hot or as mild as you like them.
I'm not sure what else there is to say. If I'm being honest, the Random Kitchen has occasionally started to feel like a bit of a chore recently (I know, I know - self-inflicted wounds much?), but for all this recipe involves a lot of steps and a certain amount of waiting time, it's all very straightforward and the end results are well worth the effort. This is a colourful and flavourful meal, a well-timed dose of summer just as the clocks go back and the nights start to draw in - and, should this happen to be a relevant criterion in your household, it should be substantial enough to placate all but the most voracious of carnivores too. Score!
One-word verdict: Vegetastic.
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