Vegetarian Fusion Cuisine From Around the World

When I was a vegetarian for 3 years (it took me 8 years to get to that state), one thing I missed constantly was the texture of meat, especially burgers. The packaged, commercial veggie burgers were not only expensive but they just didn't cut it. That was around 1997. I have yet to taste a commercial veggie burger that had texture and taste to satisfy both vegetarians and meat-eaters. Well, there's one at a Canadian burger chain known as Harvey's. But their's is the only one. So, I had to create my own. It took me nearly 5 years of trying, but I managed it. Unfortunately, I never wrote down the exact recipe, and have never been able to make it exactly the same. Que sera sera.

The one time that I did turn out a great veggie burger was for a party that some friends were throwing. I was still a vegetarian at the time, and I thought hard about something appropriate, since most of the guests weren't vegetarians. Success. My burgers were so popular that night that I saw one guy, Willie, with a stack of 12 on his plate. After three hours of preparing and cooking, I'd only made 60 - 2 per expected guest. Willie told me how much he loved them, hence the tower on his plate. But he was in for a shock when I told him there wasn't any meat in the burgers. He actually wouldn't believe me at first.

What did I use? Now here's the part you aren't going to like. This recipe is still sort of a secret, so even though I'm going to give you ingredients, I'm not going to give you measurements. I'm also not going to give you precise instructions, but I will refer you to my mushroom fritters post, which you should follow as far as the cooking part goes.

1. I used two types of mushrooms: button and canned shiitake. I diced both up very fine with a sharp chef's knife.
2. I used chickpea flour (called "besan" in East Indian and West Indian groceries). You can also grind up dried chickpeas. Chickpea flour has a great binding agent, so it's perfect for veggie burgers, high in protein, tasty, and surprisingly under-utilized - apparently good with beer. It's used daily in India and other nearby South Asian countries, as well as in Italy.
3. I also used grated raw potato, grated raw onion, grate cheese (mozarella and cheddar), salt and pepper, a bit of red chili flake, and ground cumin.

Still with me? Okay, now this recipe is really just a mutation of my great-grandmother's and grandmother's mushroom fritter. So the preparation and cooking instructions there apply. I suggest using a cast-iron frying pan or a cast-iron pancake griddle. Cast-iron holds heat well, so you can reduce heat down to low and still have items cooking for 20 minutes or more, especially if you cover the pan. And that is the basis of one more secret: follow my "grandma" recipe, but use cast-iron, turn the heat to low and let each batch of veggie burgers cook, covered, for about 25 minutes. Enjoy.

(c) Copyright 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://www.chameleonintegration.com/blogs/vegfusion

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