Not Quite Veg Every day - but Trying: Cheesy Bean Burgers

A very quick post, but I was very pleased with how supper turned out this evening and I thought I would share because it was mostly made out of stuff in the cupboards (or could very easily be), and it turned out to be tastier than I was anticipating. I forgot to take any pics either, because we were very hungry, but here's the picture from the Good Food website, which I hope they don't mind me using here:

I'd been flicking through back issues of Good Food when I was meal planning for July the other week, and came across this. Now I haven't been blogging much about my campaign from earlier in the year to get us as a family to eat less meat, but it's still there in the background, and overall, I'd say we are eating less meat. We have veg coming in the garden now too, and the chickens are laying well despite the distinct lack of sunshine, so there's lots of opportunity for good salads and stuff. There are the favourites taken from Veg Everyday, that I've morphed into our regular diet, I've also picked up a few good recipes from Good Food. Remind me to tell you about cheese and marmite pasties one day.

wet dog - off on his hols

Anyway, tonight's recipe appeared in July 2010 Good Food as cheesy bean burgers. I was going to have to double the original recipe anyway, and when I read it again today, I thought it needed a little pimping up. In fact, it was my mum who ended up making them. She's here to collect Fred the dog who is going to stay with her for most of the holidays. It's a long story which I won't go into here, but it will make my life, and our holiday arrangements much easier. I took the opportunity to run Blue into town after school to get his glasses tightened up, and left her with the recipe and some extra instructions that I gabbled at her as we went out of the door. It worked though, so here's my recipe, to make 10 good size burgers:

Cheesy Corny Bean Burgers

Ingredients: 2 x 400g tins of butter beans, 1 x 340g (285g drained weight) can of sweetcorn, 1 onion, 2 cloves of garlic, handful of basil leaves (or rosemary would be nice too I think), 150 g cheese (the original specifies wensleydale, which I used, but a mature cheddar would be nice), olive oil, 2tbsp plain flour, 2 eggs, 100g fresh breadcrumbs

Method: Pre-heat the oven to 2000. Drain & rinse the butter beans, then mash in a bowl with a fork to make a rough puree. Finely chop the onion and garlic, heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan, add the onions & garlic and fry for 3-4 minutes.Grate/crumble the cheese, and finely shred the basil (or chop finely if using rosemary). Drain the sweetcorn and stir into the puree along with the onion mixture, the cheese, the basil and freshly ground salt and pepper. Shape the mixture into 10 patties, cover and chill for 10 mins in the fridge (or until ready to cook).

Get out 3 plates, put the flour on one, then the eggs, beaten in the next, and finally, the breadcrumbs on the third plate. Get the patties out of the fridge and roll first in the flour then the egg, then the breadcrumbs.

Lightly oil a baking tray, transfer the bread crumbed patties on to the tray and into the oven. They will need 25-30 mins in the oven, turning at least once to get them brown all over.

We ate them with potato wedges also cooked in the oven (the method I use is here, accompanying another (meaty) burger recipe) and green salad from the garden. Delicious.