I love cooking with meat, but once in awhile it’s nothing but a mere necessity to keep it nice, clean & VEGETARIAN! These days it’s becoming more and more of a trend for people to have a meatless diet (or even call themselves a vegetarian and still occasionally eat fish and chicken…hmm…never really got that?). Tonight I’m having some devoted vegetarian friends over for dinner and so I experimented a bit with some of my favorite produce.
The thing that I enjoy most about vegetarian cooking is that I don’t have to limit myself to using ingredients that generally work well with the protein that I use. I can simply just grab my favorite produce and let my cooking imagination run wild. Later this week there will be a Tales of a Persian Saturday post about Persian love & dedication for eggplants. Although there’s nothing Persian about these food-tabulous Vegetarian Burgers, I’m so obsessed with eggplant that I had to use it as the ‘burger bun’, which really adds to the overall flavor. In case you really hate eggplant (God forbid!) you can always supplement it with another favorite round vegetable. If you do so, please let me know how that worked out by commenting below; very curious what you guys think of this foodilicous Vegetarian Burgers recipe!
Happy vegetarian cooking!
BUY:
- Serves approximately 8 Vegetarian Burgers
- 1 Eggplant
- 1 Zucchini
- 50 gr Carrot (julienne strips)
- 20 gr Chives
- 2 Tomatoes
- 1 Mozzarella
- 2 tsp Ground chili pepper
- 1 tsp Ground ginger powder
- Olive oil
DO:
- Slice the zucchini and eggplant into slices of (respectively) 0.5 cm and 1 cm and sprinkle with a bit of salt, pepper and olive oil; put them aside
- Heat up a grill-pan and semi-bake the eggplant slices on both sides; put them aside
- Pre-heat oven to 200C/400F
- Slice the mozzarella into fine pieces and marinate with ground ginger powder, ground chili powder, salt and pepper
- Chop the tomatoes, chives, and carrot (the last one preferably julienne strips)
- Build up beautiful 'Burger towers' (use pictures above AND below as reference!!), season all burgers with salt/pepper/ground chili pepper and place the tray into the pre-heated oven.
- Regularly check on oven and after approximately 20 minutes the Vegetarian Burgers should be ready to serve!
Oh and FYI:
You can serve these with whatever side dish you'd like. I like to serve them with a fresh side dish (e.g. the yogurt, walnut & dille recipe --> find this recipe under curious dishtales and tales of a persian saturday on the blog. Enjoy!
mouth watering!!!!!! I’m definitely trying this burger, I love eggplant! looks like something awesome to serve at parties as finger food.
The Real Person!
That’s actually a great idea, to serve it as finger food! Thanks for your comment Daniel!