Pinto Bean Burgers
Our gardens are coming along. Slowly. The chill was back the other night, down to the mid-30s; so the plants held their breath for a few hours. Still, I put in a new bed of bee balm at the side of the house the other day: a whole choir of happy plants. I'm betting on lots of bees and hummingbirds to provide the music by July.
Time's precious here in northwestern Connecticut: summer's short; winter, long. I don't want to waste a moment of the day as it comes into full. In fact, I often catch myself saying these lines from Emily Dickinson: "There came a day at Summer's full/ Entirely for me--/I thought that such were for the saints/ Where Resurrections Be--"
With fragment of poetry as my mind's music, I worked in the garden this morning. When I came in for lunch, Bruce had made one of our quick favorites from COOKING KNOW-HOW: veggie burgers, a mixture of beans and oats with nuts thrown in for the fat and texture. With a salad, it can't be beat.
First, Bruce chopped 1 medium yellow onion and softened in a skillet over medium heat with 1 tablespoon walnut oil.
Here's one of our rules for real food: no empty calories. Thus, we're not fans of tasteless fats. Why add calories without getting a punch of flavor out of them? Untoasted walnut oil does the trick for this simple meal.
Next, he put all of this in a food processor fitted with the chopped blade: one 15-ounce can pinto beans, drained and rinsed; 1/2 cup walnut pieces; 1/2 cup rolled oats (not quick-cooking or steel-cut); 1 large egg; 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon; 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin; 1/2 teaspoon salt; and a few grinds of fresh pepper.
He scooped the entire contents of the skillet into the food processor, locked on the lid, and processed it just until it was a grainy paste. Then he set it aside at room temperature for 10 minutes while I pulled together the salad and a simple Caesar dressing (I'll have to blog that one of these days).
Setting the mixture aside helps it to set up as the oats absorb moisture. It's still wet--but he formed patties by scooping up about 1/3 cup of it, patting it on the spoon, and then dropping that bit back into the (still uncleaned) large skillet over medium heat--into which he'd already added another tablespoon of untoasted walnut oil.
He made several patties, cooked them about 4 minutes, flipped them with a large spatula, and let them go another 4 minutes. Easy.
I had the salad on the plates and we were ready to eat. Now that's a lunch after a day of writing and working in the garden--or really, a meal after just about anything I can imagine. (And look at that little dab of grainy mustard. Yum. Want to know how to make it? Check it out here.)
beans, burgers, vegetarian
Reader Comments (1)
Delicious! The walnuts are a nice touch for flavor and filler. Love that. We just made some black bean/sweet potato burgers...the way to go!