Falafel Burgers

On a recent stay in Santa Barbara, I discovered the joy of falafel burgers at a place called The Habit. With a basket of sweet potato fries on the side, I was in heaven. It was one of those meals that you savor as you eat, and then again in memory.

My brother Doug teaches cooking and healthy lifestyle classes with his wife Patricia. He's always looking for a better veggie burger recipe, and when I heard an NPR interview with a chef who'd devoted a whole cookbook to the topic, I immediately thought of Doug, hopped on Amazon, and ordered a copy for his birthday. I got myself a copy as well, but let it sit on the shelf until that happy meal at The Habit. Suddenly, I was all about digging into Lukas Volger's Veggie Burgers Every Which Way.

Sure enough, there was a falafel burger recipe. I've made it twice already in the past week, even though there are so many other enticing burgers that I ought to branch out. However, it's fun to really learn a recipe, go to school on it. The burgers were tasty the first time, but I wanted to improve my results. There are things I like better about my second try, but others that I preferred about my first. I'm definitely giving this recipe a few more rounds along with sampling other burgers from the book. It's not like the recipes are so complicated, but having my best version of something makes me happy.

What made the second try a little more complicated was my inattention at the start--I soaked double the amount of chickpeas, then decided to simply double the whole recipe rather than waste the rehydrated peas. My food processor isn't big enough to handle so much volume, and working in stages got in the way of attaining an ideal texture. However, the ingredients were better. This time, I had cumin seeds--last time I'd settled for ground cumin. The recipe calls for thickening (only if necessary) with a little chickpea flour; so far I haven't located any. The first go round I used whole wheat, this time it was soy flour, just to be different. Next I'll try it without the flour--the mixture seems so loose and wet when forming the patties, but baking dries it out quite a bit, and it should still hold together, not crumble, even without the help of an extra binding agent.

I also tossed in a fat handful each of chia and flax seeds in honor of ultramarathoner (and vegan foodie) Scott Jurek, whose Eat & Run not only offers great nutrition advice but concludes each chapter with an enticing recipe.

Next time I'll be patient and grind the flax seeds first--their crunch was a little too assertive, and the body can't absorb as many nutrients from whole seeds. They aren't all all necessary to the recipe, but it's always good to find ways to incorporate flax into one's diet, particularly for runners (and women--especially peri- or post-menopausal).

Today I stacked the burger with some tzatziki-inspired cucumbers, fresh tomatoes, and lightly wilted purple kale. I thinly sliced the cucumbers and onions, sprinkled them with salt, pepper, dried mint, and lemon juice, and mashed them into plain Greek yogurt.

Even though handling so much falafel mixture was a pain, I'm not sorry to have 11 more burgers stashed in the freezer. My experience with the first batch is that the flavor develops even more over the next 24 hours, and the patties heat up beautifully in the microwave without affecting texture.

Lukas Volger shares many of his recipes on his website: www.lukasvolger.com, although this one isn't there. It's best to just buy his wonderful cookbook, but if you want to try the burger, another blogger did post the recipe, along with her tips: www.madriverkitchen.com/2011/04/baked-falafel-burger-with-tzatziki.html

I'll add to the post as I work on the recipe, but it's all about tweaking my rendition of it, not the recipe itself, which is simply wonderful and easy to produce (so long as you don't double the chickpeas and decide to go ahead and run with it).