My new fave veggie burgers

I’ve been making veggie burgers for a long time. I’ve only posted one of my recipes so far, because I try to make recipes a bunch of time before I post.

Trouble is, I have a day job and a life, so sometimes that stuff gets in the way.

I generally make some sort of veggie burger on a weekly basis. In the case of veggie burgers, I’ve got to admit, I’ve been completely distracted by this recipe by Heidi Swanson. Her website is incredible, if you are a vegetarian cook you should be looking at it.

Here is her Ultimate Veggie Burger recipe. I’ve decided it’s my total fave veggie burger recipe, other than some really specific stuff dependent on seasonal garden fresh items that I’ll blog about in spring and summer.

Normally, I have a lot of things to say about other people’s recipes and I pick them apart. This is recipe is perfect how it is. I don’t have anything to add.

I also was unable to take any pictures today, so I will let the picture on her website stand as the best one.

Sopa Seca

I first encountered this recipe in the Cook’s Illustrated cookbook The Quick Recipe. This has become one of our favorite dishes. Sopa Seca is essentially a Mexican casserole, based on pasta or sometimes rice. The pasta or the rice is browned before being combined with liquid and other ingredients and baked.

The recipe we like is made with pasta. Traditionally, the pasta used is fideo, a coiled vermicelli (sometimes fideo also refers to a dish similar to sopa seca.) I just use gluten free spaghetti. Tinkyada is the best brand that I have found.

The browning of the pasta was a surprising technique to me at first. (It also freaks out anyone who may be in the kitchen with you when you are cooking). It adds a rich nutty flavor that stands up nicely to the other strong flavors in the dish.

Browning the pasta

It works best to brown the pasta a handful at a time, so that you have more control. It can go from brown to burnt quickly. As each batch browns, transfer it to a baking dish.

All the browned pasta

Once all of the pasta is browned, you can use the same skillet to saute the onions and spices (cumin and chipotles). After a few minutes I add beans and veggies (in this case spinach and shredded zucchini, or sometimes broccoli chopped small) to make this a one dish meal. Then in goes the liquid that will cook the pasta, in my case veggie broth and the liquid from the tomatoes. Once it’s come up to bubbling, carefully pour the whole thing over the browned pasta.

Black beans, onions, garlic, chipotles, cumin, tomatoes, and shredded zuccini

You just have to have faith when you brown the pasta in the first step, and you just have to hang in there for the next part as well. When you pour the broth and veggies over the pasta, all of the veggies and the beans just kind of sit on top of the still hard noodles. It really doesn’t seem like it’s going to work at all.

The hot onion bean and tomato mixture goes over the noodles

After it’s been in the oven for 15 minutes or so, the liquid is absorbed by the noodles. When you give it a stir, you can see that the noodles are soft.

The pasta has cooked

Once the pasta has softened, you top the whole thing with some shredded cheddar or Monterey jack (pepper jack if you fell like having a really spicy dish), and return it to the oven for another five minutes. Creamy, spicy and delicious, I like this with some cilantro, avocado, a little sour cream and a big squeeze of lime juice. Make a big batch, it reheats nicely.

White Chili with Tofu

In the same issue of Cook’s Illustrated that I found the Baked Manicotti recipe (Jan/Feb ’07) there is also a recipe for White Chili (with chicken). The combination of green chilies and cannellini beans intrigued me. For whatever reason I never actually tried making it. When I made other chili or looked up the manicotti recipe, I’d think “oh yeah, white chili…gotta try that” and that was as far as I got.

Well finally, two years later, I got around to experimenting with this recipe concept to see if I could make it work with tofu. I decided I’d use frozen and thawed tofu, as that would give a nice chewy texture. I browned the tofu in canola oil as the first step in the recipe. I set the browned tofu aside and added it to the chili at the end of cooking. In the future, I would add the tofu a bit earlier, as it would benefit from spending more time with all of the flavorful ingredients.

Frozen and thawed tofu-the texture becomes quite spongy which is chewy when cooked

The heat in white chili generally comes from green chili peppers. Some recipes were specific about which kind to use, some not. Some called for a blend, which makes sense–it’s all heat but different varieties use together makes for a more complex and layered flavor in the heat. In the end, I went with what was available and looked good in the market, poblanos and serranos.

Cilantro, scallions, poblanos and serranos

As far as the beans, all of the recipes I looked at pretty much covered all of the types of white beans, navy, black eyed peas, great northern and cannellini. I went with the cannellini because I thought their creamy texture would go well with the heat of the chilies and the chewy texture of the tofu. I used canned cannellini (Goya are my favorite brand; they have the most consistently good texture and flavor.) This worked out well, but I think in the future I would cook up dry beans for extra flavor.

While the tofu was browning, I minced the chilies and some red onion in the food processor. Once I’d taken the tofu out of the pot, I added a little more oil and cooked the chilies and onions with some garlic and cumin until it was soft (next time I’ll include coriander and oregano as well). Taking a major cue from the Cook’s Illustrated recipe, I pureed some of the onion/chili mix with some of the beans and returned it to the pot and added some (homemade) vegetable stock. This made a nice substantial base for the chili which thickened further after about 20 minutes of simmering. Next time, I will add the tofu at this point as well. I will also try replacing some of the stock with beer as the cooking liquid (gluten-free of course).

After the broth has thickened, the beans went in to be heated through. At the very end the scallions and cilantro went in along with the juice of a lime. These last additions added just the right amount of brightness to the flavor.

This was a chili with heat, but the overall flavor was much more delicate than red chili. I think it was saved from being too fiery when I took away some of the onion-chili mixture after cooking it down (my husband mentioned that his eyes were watering in from the fumes, the other room.) Two poblanos and one serrano would have done it; I started with three poblanos and 3 serranos. I served it with sour cream and avocado which further served to temper the heat. I think you could also add a little montery jack or some mild cheddar, but too strong a cheese would be a distraction. Some queso fresco and/or mexican crema would also be interesting. We also had some good tortilla chips on the side (Our favorites are Green Mountain Gringo, Miguel’s Stowe Away and Garden of Eatin.)

White Chili with garnishes

We really liked this dish. I’ll definitely make it again, soon with the changes I have noted to improve the flavor.

Pictures are here.