Vegan Chickpea and Spinach Burgers

So I have dropped off the map for seemingly forever. There seems to be a pattern of no posting when an exam is due, but I thought I’d break that this time as I may not have been posting but bloody hell I’ve been cooking.
I’m now attempting the full transition into Vegan, no cheating, no turning a blind eye to things and it’s going well. I’m on day eleven without any real feeling that I’m going to crack, I’ve even been for a meal out which was lovely but certainly a very difficult step.
I attempted a few weeks ago to quell some cravings by making vegan burgers. I wish I hadn’t bothered lol.

They were really delicious but such a faff on! The chickpeas just wouldn’t stick together so I ended up adding more and more peanut butter until I essentially had peanut butter burgers…not entirely unpleasant but didn’t hit the savoury spot I was aiming for. I decided to include this recipe anyway, as it did get the boyfriend stamp of approval which is very hard to get so their must be something in it.

I’m going to include the full recipe as I’ve had requests that I start including them more…

What you need:
– An onion sized onion
– Three garlic cloves (I like four but my boyfriend travels for work so be considerate)
– Two cans of chickpeas (drained)
– A bag of spinach (for the Popeye effect)
– A carrot, grated
– 2 Tbsp soy sauce (blue dragon is vegan)
– 1 Tbsp Cumin
– 2 Tbsp of peanut butter (In the original recipe, I must have used the whole f-ing jar, so prey for wet chickpeas)
– 200g rice, cooked.
– Tabasco to taste (in other words LOTS)

What to do:
– Fry the onion until onion-like, add the garlic and cook until the house smells.
– Add the chickpeas, spinach and carrot and cook until spinach looks slimed and gross, but apparently tastes better.
– Dump the whole lot into a mixing bowl, add the cumin, peanut butter, Tabasco, rice and seasoning.
– Mix until messy.
– Allow to cool then pull your hair out for an hour and a half trying to get the lot to stick together and form patties.
– Swear curse and cry. Attempt to blend it, add more peanut butter.
– When eventually in some pattie-like shape lightly fry until they fall apart in the pan.
– Put on a plate to cool then using your hands smush them back into a pattie shape with the brute force of your bare hands.
– Enjoy….

In all seriousness they do taste nice, but I cook a lot and find it frustrating when you follow a recipe and it doesn’t work…because I’m human.
Still I wish you the best of luck and hope your endeavours don’t leave you sobbing with peanut butter smeared in your eyebrows.
Happy cooking.
The Foodie
Xxx

It’s Fun to Say Goulash!

I had grand plans this week of a decedent Indian curry with lashings of Tarragon and saffron and fresh chicken and then I realised that I’m a student and don’t crap money so settled on a Goulash. It’s cheap and flavour full but mostly because it’s fun to say Goulash.

I took a recipe buuuut I pretty much ignored most of it so it would be pointless to share it. I took a pork loin and trimmed the fat off and cut into cubes which was quite time consuming but it saved so much money on the meat to do it myself rather than buy pork loin steaks to do the exact same thing. I used a shit load of paprika, some cinnamon, chilli powder, mixed herbs and parsley and marinated the pork for about half an hour. Fry it with an onion, until it’s browned, chuck in a tin and a half of chopped tomatoes let it reduce down a bit then add a couple of tins of new potatoes (or fresh if you have that thing I hear about called money). Then just leave to simmer until it tastes right and the porks cooked 🙂 really simple.
I wouldn’t add any salt until the end as the pork really is quite salty so there is a danger of over salting it which I nearly did.

But yeah it tasted great really rich and exciting considering how simple and cheap it was to make. I serve it with rice and natural yoghurt just to make it more substantial as there really isn’t that many calories in it upon my, probably vastly inaccurate calculations. I call it optimism.
GOOOOOUUUUUULLLLLASH! It really is fun.
The Foodie
Xxx