Fava Bean Burgers

These were delicious, but burgers they were not. They were crispy on the outside with a soft, creamy interior(would have been even creamier if I had mashed the fava beans more : ));they tasted of subtly spiced fava beans but both the flavour and texture were too delicate to hold up to typical burger toppings and a bun.

I decided to make this recipe when I saw fresh fava beans in the grocery store. I couldn’t remember the recipe requirements so just packed a produce bag full of them thinking I might be eating the beans every day for a week! I was wrong……..1.2kg in the pod yielded only 400g shelled beans…I used a few edamame to make up the 454g/1 lb required for the recipe.

I knew the fava beans would take a while to prep “ I did have help “ but by the time I had toasted and ground the spices, shelled, blanched, and skinned the favas, sautéed, squeezed and chopped the spinach and peeled, diced, cooked and mashed the potato, I found Ottolenghi’s statement that he saved us time by omitting the recipe for the sauce laughable. What would really save time is using frozen shelled and skinned favas, frozen chopped spinach and leftover potatoes!

Vegetarian daughter, who helped with the prep, loved them. We just ate them with a squeeze of lemon but I can see these as a pita filling with lots lettuce, tomato and a tzatziki type sauce.

I made these using frozen broad beans (fava beans) - yupp, still quite a bit of work (though I skinned the beans sitting on my balcony enjoying the sun, so actually I didn't even mind).

However, I'm afraid that I blew it - I thought I had to add 400g of breadcrumbs instead of the actually required 40g. I only added one pack (150g) before I realized my mistake, still that's more than 3x the required amount and made for quite a dry mass. I added an extra egg to make up, but I think it would have been a lot nicer without the excess of breadcrumbs. But even in spite of this, they still tasted very interesting.

I'm not a big fan of fennel seeds, so I substituted part of that for even more caraway seeds - the result was too much caraway, so next time I'd just use the amounts recommended.

Edited 8 January 2016: This actually works really well for the LO's, if you cut back on the spices. Our little guy enjoyed them, I guess the real question is rather if I still have the time to make them...