Very green burgers
Seasonal vegetarian, dairy-free recipe
Make sure your children are eating enough green vegetables with these vegetarian burgers. Chock-a-block with green veggies! Both chard and spinach are in season during the summer months, so are broad beans.
Serves: 2 • Preparation Time: 30 minutes • Cooking Time: 30 minutes • Author: Josine Atsma
Ingredients
- 250 g potatoes, peeled and cubed
- 250 g broad beans (podded)
- 1 chili pepper
- 1 clove garlic, peeled & chopped
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 4 tbsp sunflower oil
- 75 g fresh chard or spinach
- 1 organic egg
- 25 g bread crumbs
- 2 pitta breads
- Rocket or lettuce to serve
- Soya yogurt to serve
Special Diets
When using the ingredients listed, this recipe is suitable for the following diets:
• Vegetarian
• Dairy free
Preparation
Start by boiling the potatoes for around 15 minutes, or until a fork goes in easily.
In the meantime, pod the broad beans if using fresh.
Boil the podded broad beans for around 5 minutes. Some people like to double pod them afterwards, but I think it removes a lot of the nutrients, so I just use them as they are. Heat 1 tbsp sunflower oil and wilt the spinach or chard.
Top the chilli pepper and chop finely, if you like it spicy, leave the seeds, if you like it less spicy, take out the seeds.
Put the potatoes, broad beans, chilli pepper, garlic, 2 tbsp olive oil, cumin seeds, turmeric and ground coriander in a kitchen machine and blend well. Leave to cool before adding the fresh coriander, chard or spinach, one egg and salt and pepper to taste. Mix again until you have a smooth puree like consistency.
With wet hands, form 4 burgers, put on a plate and leave in the fridge for around 20 minutes.
Heat the rest of the sunflower oil in a frying pan and on a medium heat, fry the burgers for 6 minutes on one side, turn and fry the other side for 6 minutes too.
Serve on the pitta bread with the rocket leaves or lettuce and a dollop of (soya) yogurt.
Please Note: May still contain traces of gluten, egg and dairy or other allergens. Before consumption always check the label of each individual product/ingredient for allergens.
Our WWOOF host story
Josine and JP are hosts in Scotland sharing their home and garden with with 10 chickens, Harvey the rooster and two cats – “We are self-sufficient in most of our fruit and vegetables and eat weeds in the leaner months” – Josine is the owner of the vibrant and award winning Stirling Health Food Store where many more seasonal recipes like the one above can be found.
JP, who’s a freelance web developer, has built a website called ‘Circle of the Good Life’ where Josine writes a monthly blog about their life in Glendevon. Below is a summary of their WWOOF story including how this energetic and creative couple of ex-WWOOFers from the Netherlands came to be hosts themselves:
We moved to a cottage with a fairly large garden back in 2011 where we wanted to grow our own
fruit and vegetables and be self-sufficient for as much of the year as possible. It soon became clear
that we had bitten more off than we could chew and decided we needed help. Thankfully we,
ourselves, have been WWOOFers for 9 months in 2006 when we stayed with several different
WWOOF hosts, all located in Scotland. This was such a great experience and some hosts had such an
inspiring lifestyle that we took the plunge to move to Scotland and be self-sufficient. That’s how we
knew about WWOOF and how it can be a two-way exchange of knowledge.
We have welcomed between 20 – 30 WWOOFers during our time as hosts and always had great fun
and, boy, what a difference an extra pair (or pairs) of hands make! With the help of WWOOFers we
built a greenhouse, a chicken coop, dug a massive pond, planted trees, grew lots of vegetables and
made jam, sauerkraut and wine. We have so many fond memories: playing board games with each
other, watching (horror) movies, listening to music and going for walks in the countryside. Of course,
sometimes you find there are not many common grounds between hosts and volunteer or that
language is a barrier, but you always find ways around it and that’s what’s so good about WWOOF;
you learn about other cultures and can have open discussions to learn even more about others.
At the time of writing I am certainly looking forward to welcoming the first WWOOFers of this year and I’m sure we’ll get
lots of things done, have interesting discussions, learn something new and enjoy a good glass of
homemade strawberry wine together.
Big thanks to Josine for permission to share this recipe and for writing a potted WWOOF story.
Photo credit: Josine Atsma
