everyone forgets that icarus also flew.

sometimes it doesn't matter what you do, a recipe just will not turn out the way it's supposed to. if you're anything like me, this kind of thing happening usually causes at least brief feelings of the end of the world. but then, if you're anything like me, you emotionally invest in trifles to the point where you feel like the world could end any day. and since the results are usually edible, and the world never seems to end, you often find yourself feeling very foolish.

i have been waiting for a long time for my icarus moment regarding cooking the recipes of one mr. yotam ottolenghi. everything so far has gone so smoothly that i couldn't help but get a kind of 'it's too quiet...' feeling, previously only encountered when playing various editions of silent hill. i can't explain why ottolenghi's recipes make me so nervous. it could be the art gallery style presentation of plenty, every page demanding more reverence than someone with a make-do-and-mend personality like mine can give. it could be the total bafflement and dismay his vegetarian recipes caused the contestants of the most recent series of masterchef. it could be my artfully concealed (and equally artfully revealed) recurrent lack of belief in my own ability. whatever is the cause of it, it's there; the shaky 'can i really do this?' feeling that characterizes me embarking upon a recipe from plenty, and usually the 'how the hell did i do that??' sense of stolen triumph when i cook it and everything turns out just fine. or, in this case, the battering i subjected myself to from my inner critic over a minor textural mishap.

i had dogeared the page for the recipe for broad bean burgers in my copy of plenty (see that lack of reverence in effect?) the minute i put my broad beans in the garden. i'm not a fan of 'veggie burgers' of and in themselves, usually they are merely cardboard-tasting signifiers for the absence of meat; a nod to the form of eating a burger with no content of their own. but ottolenghi's recipes never disappoint on flavour and colour, and his recipes never rely on the crutch of simulated meat eating experience, so i figured here that i might be onto a winner. i knew that the idea of me creating this recipe purely from my own four-plant crop was rank optimism, but i figured using mostly my beans and some market, or, and here i shudder, supermarket, produce to fill it out, wouldn't do any harm, right? wrong.

so here's the recipe (and i've added my notes in italics to illustrate the disaster that felt major but was in reality a minor vanity/pride thing):

broad bean burgers

3/4 tsp each cumin, coriander and fennel seeds
225g spinach (easily sourced from my garden at the moment, the spinach plants are still going crazy)
3 tbsp olive oil
500g shelled broad beans (about 2/3 of these were from my garden, the rest were supermarket produce, that were unnaturally big, which i think is where it went wrong)
350g potatoes, peeled and roughly diced
1/2 fresh green chilli, deseeded and finely chopped (i used a whole one, cos i'm 'ard)
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
3 tbsp chopped coriander
40g dried breadcrumbs (just for the record, i keep stashes of the processed ends of my loaves, dried ones in the cupboard, fresh ones in the freezer, so i always have a supply, and nothing gets wasted)
1 free-range egg
120ml sunflower oil
4 lemon wedges
salt and black pepper

put the whole seeds in a pan and dry-roast on a high flame for 3-4 minutes, or until they start releasing their aromas. grind to a powder in a pestle and mortar (or a coffee grinder if you're a lazy spice fan like me) and leave aside.

wilt the spinach in a hot pan with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. when cool eough to handle, squeeze out any liquid, roughly chop, and set aside.

blanch the broad beans in boiling water for about a minute; drain and refresh under cold running water. once cool enough to handle, remove the skins ad discard (my garden beans popped out of their skins just fine, the supermarket monsters on the other hand were a nightmare, the skin was the texture of a condom, honestly, it seriously taxed my talons)

cook the potatoes in boiling water for about 15 minutes, or until tender. drain and tip into a large mixing bowl. immediately add the skinned broad beans, crushed seeds, chilli, garlic, turmeric, remaining two tablespoons of olive oil, and some salt and pepper. use a potato masher to mash it all up roughly; don't worry if some of the beans are not totally crushed (some of the beans?? some of the beans??! could i get those supermarket giganti-beans to so much as yield to my mashing might? no i could not. they kept their shape no matter what i did, and gave me The Fear about the texture of the mixture ever holding together. bastards.). next (after you have Totally Given Up Inside), add the wilted spinach, chopped coriander, and breadcrumbs. taste to check the seasoning. lastly, add the egg.

wet your hands and shape the mixture into fat patties that are roughly 5cm in diameter and 2cm thick. chill them for at least half on hour (during which a few prayers to the kitchen gods that these things will hold together in the frying pan might be advisable).

to cook, heat up the sunflower oil and fry the burgers on a high heat for 5 minutes on each side, or until golden brown. serve warm, with lemon wedges.

so here are mine on day one:


they did hold together, just about. i ate them with the tiniest baby spinach leaves from my garden plants, and a few roughly torn chunks of wholemeal sourdough, still warm from the oven. my annoyance at the texture thing was still fairly present, i have to say, but as you can see, they held together, they looked fine, and they tasted actually really good. ottolenghi's recipes seem so involved in the colour of the dish that you cannot help but associate it with the taste; these definitely tasted green and fresh; there was a heat to them, but it was a clean heat, aniseedy and almost cool, if that's not too much of a contradiction, from the fennel; although still powerful.

because i cook only for myself a lot of the time, i often rely on big-batch cooking, and end up eating the same thing a couple of days running. this recipe was no different, and so i left some of my burgers languishing in the fridge, and the next day, fried them up to have with a lemon and garlic mushroom rice:


i think these ones were better; the added overnight in the fridge had allowed the flavours to marry more effectively, and the mixture had further stiffened and was better behaved in the pan. this second lot i ate feeling a bit like a big baby for kicking up such a fuss about such a minimal issue; after all, given that they held together, looked okay, and tasted good, what was i really moaning about other than wounded pride and a blow to the ego? especially since i've now found a flavoursome vegetarian burger recipe that doesn't pretend to be anything other than the sum of it's (next time, more carefully sourced) ingredients.