Burgers.

I never thought of myself as a meat-and-two-veg kind of cook. That stood me in good stead at the start of my period of being veggie; although I like them, I saw no need to make quorn, tofu, etc appear as regular blocs of protein to mask the absence of a steak or lamb chop from my plate. Instead, I smugly cooked one-pots, salads, pastas...

And then I started to run out of recipes. Worse - I ran out of ideas. I bought a new cookbook (Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian Cookbook, for those who were wondering) and found myself furiously flicking through page after page searching for a dish that could comprise a whole meal. Then I started actually reading the blurb above the recipes. Such-and-such a dish should be served with such-and-such rice and so-and-so salsa. Stir-fry A is good served alongside stir-fry B.

It occurred to me that by excluding plates of food that looked like replicas of meat-and-two-veg, I was hugely narrowing down my range of options. Why not serve one veg dish with a side of another veg dish?

This is basically burgers with relish and salad.


Chickpea fritters

Tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/2 red onion, roughly chunked
1 clove garlic
1 tomato, roughly chunked
1 egg
2 tbs flour
1 tsp ground cumin seeds
1 tsp ground coriander seeds
1 tsp chilli flakes

Insert everything into a food processor and whizz until you've got a rough paste - unlikely to take more than a few seconds. Add a little more flour if the mixture looks very wet, although you're not going to form it into patties, so it doesn't have to be very stiff.

Heat a few tbs of oil in a wide frying pan, and swirl to coat. Dollop in heaped tablespoons of the mixture (you should get about six), and leave (don't try to prod them about or they will stick and collapse) until you can see them browning round the edges. Carefully slide under them with a fish slice, and flip over. Leave until equally brown on the other side.


Tsatsiki

1 clove garlic
1 tbs dried mint
3 tbs 0% fat greek yoghurt
1/4 cucumber

If you've got one of those grater attachments on your food processor, this is really easy. Actually, it's pretty easy anyway. Halve your cucumber lengthways and remove the seeds, then grate - either in 3 seconds on your food processor, or 3 minutes by hand. Tip the gratings onto a sheet of kitchen roll, top with another, and squidge to remove some of the water. Crush the clove of garlic very finely.

Tip all the ingredients into a bowl, stir, and season to taste - it will probably want a decent dose of salt.


Greek Salad

1/2 red onion (the other half from the patties)
1/4 cucumber (the remains of the half that you had to buy in a supermarket to make the Tsatsiki)
2 tomatoes
1 little gem lettuce, or similar
handful olives
1 tsp dried oregano
olive oil & red wine vinegar

Very thinly slice the red onion. Halve the cucumber lengthways, remove the seeds, and slice thinly into little C-shapes. Chop the tomatoes roughly. Tear the little gem up into mouth-sized pieces.

Again, combine everything in a bowl, with about 2 tbs oil and 2 of vinegar.


This makes a good amount for two fairly hungry people. If you're one, then cook all the patties, and freeze the remainder - they can be defrosted and then reheated in the oven a month or two later (when you come home just slightly too tipsy to cook); the salad will last long enough to have it for lunch, perhaps with a toasted pitta bread, the next day, with any leftover tsatsiki stirred in.