The great vegan burger off

We were watching Saturday Kitchen yesterday morning, as we often like to do of a weekend, when Annabel Langbein - who was a guest chef on the show this week - made mayonnaise using water from a can of chick peas.  After getting over the initial shock of our minds being literally blown, we decided that we should have a stab at making some vegan mayo ourselves.  From this starting point morphed the idea of using the chickpeas as part of the dish so as not to cause any waste, and from there WOTVM had the bright idea that we should each make a vegan, chickpea-based burger to act as a vehicle for our mayonnaise.

Thus was our great vegan burger off born and the trash-talking commenced.  WOTVM tried her best to maintain a veil of secrecy as we walked around Sainsbury's, refusing to be drawn on whether particular ingredients would form a part of her burger offering.  Mr Vegan Man tried to pretend that he wasn't really sure what he'd be putting in his patty, looking to lull WOTVM into a false sense of security.

And so each of us spent time in the kitchen this afternoon, furiously chopping, mixing, blitzing and cooking our way to our entries in the battle of the burgers.  Mr Vegan Man plumped for Mediterranean and Middle Eastern flavours, whilst WOTVM went for an Indian-inspired burger.

As we sat down to taste the burgers the tension in the air was palpable.  We took our first bites, followed quickly by our second, third and fourth bites.  Neither of us said anything for some minutes, the silence only broken by chewing noises and the occasional 'Mmmmmm' sound.  Eventually, we both spoke to acknowledge that both of the burgers were very tasty and that this would not be an easy decision.  Silence followed as the seriousness of our judging task sat heavily on our shoulders.

As we reached the last few bites, WOTVM opined that she felt that her patty was a little better but that she preferred Mr Vegan Man's aioli.  Mr Vegan Man thought for a moment and agreed with this assessment.  WOTVM then said that overall she preferred Mr Vegan Man's burger; she felt that it was better seasoned.  Mr Vegan Man disagreed and said that WOTVM's offering packed in some big flavours and, on balance, he slightly preferred it to his own.

The end result - a hard-fought draw!  There really was nothing to choose between the two burgers; WOTVM's effort was an original take on some classic Indian flavours and really delivered the aromatic heat that you expect from Indian food.  A shout out to Candi's Chutney once again as the spiced carrot chutney went brilliantly, adding sweetness, heat and bite to the finished burger.  Mr Vegan Man's effort was inspired by Mediterranean and Middle Eastern flavours and managed to balance light freshness with a good kick of garlic in the aioli and chilli in the burger, along with a nice hit of mustard heat from the Jubberwacky wholegrain mustard.

Give them a try for yourself - the recipes are below - and let us know which one you prefer by commenting below or by sending us an email.  We'd also love to know how you get on with the vegan mayonnaise - we really enjoyed making it and watching it emulsify is very satisfying!  It's rich and tasty and everything you'd expect from a mayo but without the need for egg, making it great for pregnant ladies and anyone with an egg intolerance as well as vegans.  It keeps well in the fridge, so don't worry about your leftovers going to waste.

Mr Vegan Man's chick pea burger (makes three patties)

400g can of chick peas
1 medium sized carrot
1 small beetroot
5 cocktail gherkins
2 spring onions
Half a red chilli
5-6 sprigs of flat leaf parsley
2 sprigs of fresh mint
1.5 tsp cumin
1.5 tsp coriander
1 tsp smoked paprika

Mr Vegan Man's caper and tahini aioli (makes a lot of aioli)

Juice from one 400g can of chick peas
4 cloves of garlic
0.5 tbsp tahini
Half a lemon
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
350ml oil
3 tsp capers

To serve Mr Vegan Man's burger

Ciabatta rolls
Avocado (half an avocado for two burgers)
Jarred roasted red pepper (one pepper per two burgers)
Pea shoots

Preparation and cooking time 45 minutes

Pre-heat your oven to 180°C and place three of the cloves of garlic (skin on) in a roasting tin, coating with a little olive oil.  Put them in the over for 15-20 minutes so that the garlic can roast and soften.

Whilst the garlic is roasting, prepare the ingredients for the burger patties.  Finely grate the carrot and beetroot, Mr Vegan Man used cooked beetroot and then squeezed out the excess moisture but raw beetroot would work too and would add some crunch.  Chop the spring onions, gherkins, mint, parsley and chilli and place in a bowl along with the grated carrot and beetroot.

Remove the garlic from the oven when it is cooked and is a light golden brown colour.  Drain your chick peas over a bowl and set aside the liquid for making the aioli.  Mash up the chick peas with a fork in a separate bowl, leaving some of the chick peas chunky and fairly intact but with the rest making a kind of loose paste.

Combine the mashed chick peas with the chopped and grated vegetables and herbs and mix together with a fork until all of the ingredients are combined.  This should make a mixture that you can easily form into patties, however if it looks or feels a little too loose then mix through some breadcrumbs to help hold the mix together.

Divide the mixture into three equal portions and use your hands to form them into a burger shape.  Place on a plate dusted with flour and then coat the top of the patties lightly in flour too.  This will help them to crisp up whilst cooking.

To your chick pea water, add the lemon juice, tahini, capers and the three roasted cloves of garlic (de-skinned) and the remaining raw clove - the reason for this is that the roasted garlic will have a nice, mild flavour and the raw clove will add a little bit of heat and punch.  Pour in the 350ml of oil - Mr Vegan Man used 100ml of olive oil and 250ml of vegetable oil - and blitz using a hand blender.  The ingredients should magically emulsify into a creamy aioli.  The quantities used made a quite loose mayo, adding more oil will make it thicker if you so wish.

Chop your avocado into thin slices and cut the roasted red pepper into strips.  Heat a small frying pan over a medium to high heat and then add enough vegetable or sunflower oil so that the base of the pan is completely coated with a couple of millimetres of oil.  Allow the oil to get nice and hot then place the burgers in the pan.

The burgers will need 5-7 minutes on each side to get a crispy top and to cook through.  Whilst the burgers are cooking, place your ciabatta rolls in the oven for 8-10 minutes to crisp up and cook through.

Once the burgers are cooked, remove them from the pan and place them on some kitchen towel to drain off the excess oil.

Cut your ciabatta rolls open and then construct your burger, adding the avocado, then the burger, then a good dollop of the aioli followed by the pepper and pea shoots.


WOTVM's aromatic spiced chick pea burger (makes five patties)

400g can of chick peas
1 large baked potato (bake in the oven for 1.5 to 2 hours and allow to cool completely)
100g pack of baby spinach
1 green cardamom pod
1tsp cumin seeds
0.5 tsp dried chilli flakes
1tsp nigella seeds
0.5tsp turmeric
1tsp garam masala
50g panko breadcrumbs (or regular dried breadcrumbs)
50g plain flour

WOTVM's chip shop curry sauce mayonnaise (makes a lot of mayo)

Juice from one 400g can of chick peas
100ml olive oil
250ml vegetable oil
Half a lemon
2tbsp fresh coriander chopped
1tbsp mild curry powder
1tsp chilli powder

To serve WOTVM's burger

Flatbreads (or mini naan breads)
1 clove garlic
Chopped tomatoes
Red onion, finely sliced
Red chilli, finely sliced
Pea shoots
Candi's Chutney spiced carrot chutney

Preparation and cooking time 45 minutes (excluding time taken to bake and cool potato)

Start by spooning out the fluffy part of the cooked potato into a large bowl. Drain the chickpeas and add to the same bowl. Bash the cardamom pod to loosen the seeds. Tip them into another small bowl along with the cumin seeds and chilli flakes. If you own a pestle and mortar use this to gently grind down the spices. If you don't, improvise with the end of a rolling pin as I did! Tip the ground spices in with the chickpeas and potato.

Steam the spinach to wilt it down, this will only take a couple of minutes over boiling water. Leave to cool before squeezing out as much moisture as possible. Chop roughly and add to the burger mix, it's a bit like a Saag Aloo burger! Use a hand blender to blitz until relatively smooth, but leaving a few whole chickpeas here and there for texture. Check the seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste.

The mixture will be quite wet so add the breadcrumbs and flour to bring together. Lightly flour a plate and your hands before forming into 5 patties. Place on the floured plate, cover with cling film and put in the fridge until you are ready to cook.

To make the mayonnaise, add the oil and lemon juice to the chickpea water and blitz using the hand blender until thickened. Stir in the coriander, curry powder, chilli powder and season.

To cook the burgers, fill a frying pan with enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Bring the oil up to a medium high heat and then carefully place the burgers in the pan. They will take around 5-6 minutes on each side, turn the heat down if they are starting to get too brown. They will be crispy and golden brown on the outside when finished. Place the cooked burgers on some kitchen towel when cooked to drain off the excess oil.

To prepare your flat breads crush a garlic clove and rub all over the flat bread (you can also rub some of the coriander over it too). Warm up in a toaster or under the grill for a few minutes.

To assemble the burger dollop some mayo on the flatbread and place the burger on top. Slices of red onion and tomato goes next, then some coriander leaves and sliced chilli. Finally finish with some more mayo and a teaspoon of spiced carrot chutney. With the toppings I was trying to evoke memories of the condiments you get with poppadums at most Indian restaurants, such as mango chutney and onion salad. I think it works well with the burger.

Shakshouka (baked eggs), Norwich style

This is a dish that was inspired by our holiday to Tunisia last year.  We were in Sousse only a week before the tragic terrorist attack and our hotel was just a few kilometres away from where it took place.  It was hard to believe that such a beautiful and peaceful place could be the scene of such awful violence.

We both love North African and Middle Eastern food with its rich spice and vibrant flavours and the food we experienced during our stay in Sousse was sensational.  Shakshouka is a traditional dish of baked eggs in a spiced tomato and pepper sauce.  It was often available at breakfast, lunch and dinner at our hotel and was a great vegetarian option, though it was equally appreciated by the meat-eaters at the resort.  The dish varies from place to place and this is our own take on it.  Like many of the things we cook, we've taken the key traditional elements that make it a great dish and added a few little twists here and there.

We hope you enjoy making the dish as much as we love eating it!  It's an excellent midweek meal as it takes very little time to prepare and cook, but it also looks fancy enough to impress dinner guests and works brilliantly as an alternative weekend breakfast.  Let us know how you get on.

Ingredients (serves 2 for a hearty dinner):

Half a medium onion
1 sweet pointed red pepper (a regular pepper of any colour is fine as a substitute)
2 cloves of garlic
1 can of cannellini beans (400g - chick peas or butter beans work as an alternative)
1 can of chopped tomatoes (400g)
2.5 tsp. smoked paprika
1.5 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. chilli flakes/crushed chillies (chilli powder or a fresh red chilli also works)
3 tsp. capers (optional)
4 medium eggs
Olive oil (approximately 1 tbsp.)
Fresh parsley and chives to garnish (fresh coriander can be used instead)

Preparation time: 5 minutes.

Cooking time: under 25 minutes.

Preparation:

Pre-heat your oven to 200°c (fan assisted, go 220°c if your oven isn't fan assisted).

Chop the red pepper into chunks roughly 2cm by 3cm, you want reasonable sized pieces to give some texture but the size and shape need not be uniform.  Finely dice the onion or as a cheat use frozen chopped onion instead.  Crush and finely chop the two cloves of garlic, sprinkle with salt and use the back of your knife to help break the garlic down into a paste. 

Drain the cannellini beans and rinse with cold water.

Cooking:

In a medium saucepan or large frying pan, heat a good drizzle of olive oil over a medium heat and allow it to come up to temperature.  Add the peppers to the pan and let them sit for a minute or two, it doesn't hurt the flavour of the dish for them to take a bit of colour.  Add the onions and allow the onions and peppers to soften in the pan, stirring occasionally, for a few minutes.

When the onions and peppers are soft, add the garlic and allow this to soften (this should only take a minute or so).  Adding the garlic earlier runs the risk of it burning and this can give an acrid taste so don't be tempted to throw it in at the same time as the onions or peppers.  Add all of the spices and stir well.  Leave the spices, onions, peppers and garlic to cook together for a further minute or two, stirring occasionally so that the spices don't catch and burn.

Add the tin of chopped tomatoes and stir thoroughly so that the spices and vegetables mix through the tomatoes.  At this point we often add just a pinch of sugar to counteract the acidity of the tomatoes.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  When the mixture has come up to the boil, allow it to simmer for a couple of minutes and then add the cannellini beans and capers (if you aren't a fan of capers you can leave them out, but we feel they add a nice bite to the dish that works well with the eggs). 

Transfer the contents of the saucepan to a tagine or if you don't own a tagine (not everyone loves North African cooking as much as we do - we have two!) then a regular casserole dish will work fine too.  With the back of a wooden spoon, create four small wells in the mixture.  You don't want to leave the bottom of the dish exposed as the eggs could catch, but you want a small dip for your eggs to sit in.  Crack your eggs into the wells you have created, don't worry if they spill over the side of the wells slightly as this won't affect the cooking.  Drizzle over a little more olive oil and season the eggs with a little salt and black pepper.

Put the dish in the oven and leave for 10-15 minutes.  Cooking time can vary slightly depending on the oven and the size of the eggs but usually 15 minutes will give you a yolk that is just set firm, 10-12 minutes will give you a softer yolk.  Whilst the dish is cooking, chop a good handful of fresh herbs ready to garnish.

Remove from the oven, sprinkle over the herbs and serve.

Shakshouka is great with some nice fresh bread (we had ours with sourdough) to mop up all of the juices but can also be served with couscous, bulgur wheat or rice.  You can also crumble some feta over the top to finish, if that's your bag.  We will be bringing you our go to bulgur wheat recipe in the near future with some tips for cooking it just right.