Summer nights: The Joy of Seeds

I picked up a hankering for seeds from my best friend Heather. The taste of that seeded bread I couldn't get enough of in Berlin followed me right back to London, so that when I returned I realised I, like many before me, had finally discovered THE JOY OF SEEDS.

No, I am not Gillian McKeith incarnate, I just think seeds are amazing; they're little but they pack a punch. You can top off most meals with them and they'll add protein, vitamins, fibre and iron to your food without you realising they're there.

I've tried munching on all manner of seeds at my desk before and it's ended in what a stranger would think were drawers full of abandoned bird-feed.  However, I've found that by adding a handful of different seeds to my meals each day, I've begun to crave them and now miss anything that doesn't include a bit of seedy goodness. So if like me, you're not someone who's easily wooed by seeds at snack time, I suggest adding some to breads, salads, porridge, museli, flapjacks, roast dinner stuffing, burritos.... well, anywhere. Here's a few of my favourite seed-embracing recipes for summertime. Yes, they're super easy, but it's a start...

For another summer night dinner I made a giant couscous salad with sunflower seeds, which are a good source of vitamin E, protein, and minerals, and broccoli with sesame seeds, which are a great source of calcium, magnesium and iron. Along with these two recipes I served marinate aubergine, toasted wraps, salad leaves, beetroot hummus and homemade falafel.

Giant couscous salad with grated carrot, spinach, radish and sunflower seeds
Makes enough for 4

Ingredients
300g giant couscous
Olive oil
1 large carrot
Handful of washed spinach
Handful of washed radishes
Handful of sunflower seeds
Seasoning
Juice 1/2 lemon (optional)

Heat the giant couscous in a pan with a little olive oil, before pouring in around 500ml of boiling water. Allow to simmer for around five minutes, stirring occasionally.

In the mean time, grate the carrot, chop the spinach if it is a larger leaf and slice the radishes. Once the coucous is softer (it has a totally different consistency to regular couscous, so instead you're just tasting to see if it is no longer hard as opposed to fluffy), drain, allow to cool a little, and mix in a bowl with the vegetables and the seeds. Top off with some seasoning and the juice of half a lemon if you like it.

Broccoli, sesame seed and soy sauce salad
Makes enough for 4 as a side dish

Ingredients
One medium head of broccoli
1 tbsp soy sauce
1tbsp sesame seeds

Chop the broccoli into florets, and boil in salted water until just al dente. Drain, then back in the pan add the soy sauce and sesame seeds and heat for about 30 seconds, just so the flavours can mix at a high temperature.

Black coffee, watermelon and the best seeded bread you ever tasted

The two flight attendants stared at me cluelessly.
"No milk? No sugar?"
"No, just black please."
"Oh, isn't she continental."

I handed over the last of my pound coins in exchange for a simple black coffee and went back to my book while Gatwick receded into the afternoon sky and the white cliffs of somewhere slid into view. I hoped Berlin wouldn't be as bad as this. It couldn't be.

It wasn't- I'm beginning to think it may just be London that is bad.

I was lucky enough to stay with one of my best friends in Kreuzberg. Heather is a dab hand at every bit of cooking. By 11am on our first morning we'd flirted our way to free watermelon slices at the greengrocer (I say flirted, all Heather really had to do was ask some prices in German) and stocked the fridge full of berries, radishes and ripening avocados.

As the resident chickpea obsessive, I was put on hand to make hummus, while Heather concocted salads from beetroot, seeds, rocket and lemon juice. Turkish bread fresh from the market had to be kept folded in half because it took up the whole table otherwise. I think one of us managed to find some olives and Luci, another friend from London, tracked down some balsamic vinegar. Once again, we'd made a feast.

Berlin has its own chain of vegan supermarkets called Veganz (great name guys) which I heard on a Radio 4 programme is reportedly expanding into London soon. As with Barcelona, from the small section of the city I got to see, everything felt pretty geared up for vegans or anyone with a dairy-free diet- most cafes will offer soy milk with coffee or tea, and the restaurants will try their best to accommodate you if you're patient. Not expecting this to be the case, I got to try an amazing vegan burger at White Trash, where instead of just offering one vegan or vegetarian option for a burger, lets you add the vegan burger, which is made of nuts, beans, tofu, vegetables, herbs and spices, to one of the eight burger options. LONDON TAKE NOTE!

My trip happened to coincide with a crazy heatwave in which the numbers 33 and 35 degrees Celsius got flung about way too much and in the end it got too hot in the daytime to do much more than drink iced coffee and eat more slices of melon. But in the early morning and late at night we ate toasted seeded bread just with olive oil, pepper and salt, couscous and rocket salad with yoghurt for Heather and her flatmate Petra, blueberries, raspberries, and fresh mint in hot water.

On the final day, after meandering through a flea market, too hot to speak let alone barter, we ended up in a Turkish cafe, Zimt und Mehl, in Neukllölln for breakfast. I spotted 'vegan special' in German on the menu, and ten minutes later was presented with the sight above. If you go to Berlin any time soon, get to Zimt und Mehl as early as possible to grab a canal-side table, order the vegan special and for 8 euros you'll also get amazing coffee and all the bread you can fit in. You won't need to eat again until you get back on home soil.

Summer nights: In a jiffy roasted vegetable wraps

I love what weeknights become in the summer: corners of the weekend that fall into Mondays and Wednesdays that are way too cold to do anything with in winter. Summer is tinnies in the park, night buses home way too late, and good food before grabbing every bit of sunlight you can. 2013 has finally turned me into a serious serotonin chaser. I didn't think it could happen either.

This dinner is perfect for pre-going out, making a bit of a fuss of a friend before heading off, and it would also make a very easy Sunday lunch. Just call me Lionel. You could also easily adapt this for a vegan barbeque by skewering the vegetables into kebabs and grilling instead of roasting.

Refried chipotle beans form the glue for these wraps, the recipe for which can be found here. I added tomatoes and salad to mine, with a squeeze of lemon. They also last really well in lunchboxes- (If you want to be extra kind to your hangover the next day, wrap up yours while you serve your dinner so the hard work is done for the next morning!)

Makes enough to serve 2 generously, multiply up for more
Ingredients
2 peppers
4 small onions
1 courgette
Handful of mushrooms
Olive oil
Seasoning

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Chop the vegetables into chunks- I like to leave the onions whole as they retain their juices and then break them up once roasted.

Place all the vegetables in a large oven-proof dish and drizzle with a good amount of olive oil and seasoning. I don't think you need to add too many herbs or other flavours here because of the refried beans and lemon juice, but maybe some thyme, rosemary, or oregano could work well.

Cook for 30 minutes, in this time you can prepare the refried chipotle beans and salad.

Vegan chocolate birthday cake

Baking a cake hasn't given me this many smiles in a long, long time. I usually find the whole process pretty traumatic and steer well clear of things you can't properly taste as you make, adjust the seasoning for or make it up as you go along. But this cake was FUN.

From making a gazillion batches of this vegan brownie recipe for my boyfriend and my birthday earlier in the year, I figured the texture would work quite well in a cake: it's spongey and gets stickier and richer the longer you keep it. So I doubled the recipe I'd been using for brownies and the result was this supersize cake that I then had to recruit best friends and neighbours (also bezzie ms!) to help me eat. We only managed half before I had to stick it in the freezer, this cake really is GINORMOUS. Perfect for a birthday or summer party, not so much a solo mission.

Serves 10
Ingredients
3 cups of plain flour
1 cup cocoa
3 cups organic brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 pinch of salt
1 1/2 cup fresh brewed coffee
1 1/2 cup soy milk
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup plain dark chocolate chips (about two small packets' worth)/ broken chunks of plain dark chocolate


For the icing and fruit topping

1 tbsp cocoa powder
Around 200g icing sugar
Around 3 tbsp vegan margarine such as Vitalite
200g strawberries
100g raspberries
1/2 peach or nectarine

Grease and line your baking tins. I used one large springform baking tin, and two smaller tins to go on top. You could make this cake with four layers, there's enough mixture- but I fancied making it look a little OTT with one bigger layer at the bottom.

Preheat oven to 160 °C.

In a large bowl, sift together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Then in a separate bowl, pour and mix in the coffee, soy milk and oil. Add the liquid to the dry mix, stirring in the chocolate drops. 

Pour the cake mix into the tins. It will be quite runny at this point, but they do stodge up.

Leave in the oven for at least 25 minutes, checking back after that point to see if a tooth pick will come clean when inserted in the middle of the cake. 

Once the mixture springs back from light pressure when you touch it gently, it's ready. Take out and leave, in the tins, to cool for about five minutes initially. Then tip over and gently remove the baking paper, before leaving on cooling racks to cool down completely.

When the cakes have just about cooled, begin making the icing so they will be totally cool by the time it's all ready to assemble. I've kept the measurements between icing sugar and margarine vague as it often changes for me depending on heat or how stiff the icing goes, but I would stick to the rule that the less margarine you use the better, so the icing remains stiff and not too gloopy. Sift in the icing sugar to get rid of any lumps, and then use a fork to mix it into the sugar, using bit by bit, adding the cocoa as you go too.

Once you're happy with the consistency, begin assembling your cake. I chose to do one thin layer of chocolate icing with slices of strawberries for the base layer, then a layer of icing between bases 2 and 3, before topping off with a thicker layer for the top and chopped fruits. 

Remember once you've added the chopped fruit, it won't handle the heat very well, so clear some room in the fridge for this! I found myself laughing away once it was all ready, I couldn't quite believe what I'd managed to make with vegan ingredients. That's some magic right there!

BBQ sessions: Sweet potato and lime falafel with plantain and lime and coriander hummus

The only thing funnier than British people moaning about the heat is British people moaning about moaning the heat. Rest assured, this blog is a no-moan zone. Why moan when you can eat falafel?

These sweet potato and lime falafels are uber easy and perfect for making in advance for a BBQ. They also use a lot less flour and oil than other versions that are fried. They're very soft when straight out the oven, but leave them for half an hour or so to cool and they firm up, and proved the perfect summer accompaniment to my packed lunch! Heck, they survived a 7 mile cycle into work- these things are a falafel miracle.

Makes enough for four servings

Ingredients
For the falafel:
1 large or 2 medium sweet potatoes
1 tsp ground cumin
2 garlic cloves, chopped small
1 handful fresh coriander
Juice of 1 lime
100g plain flour
Seasoning
1 tbsp oil

Heat the oven to 200C. Wrap the sweet potatoes in kitchen roll and microwave for 8-10 minutes, until they are cooked the whole way through (you can check with a fork). Allow to cool for a minute or two before taking off their skins, which you should be able to do with your fingers.

Add to a large mixing bowl with the cumin, garlic, coriander, lime juice, flour and a little seasoning, and mash until smooth. Using a teaspoon, shape the potato mix into falafel-sized balls, I usually get around 16-20 out of a batch. Depending on the consistency, you can add a little oil to make the mixture wetter, or chose to leave it out.

Place on a greased oven tray and bake for around 30 minutes. They are very soft whilst baking so I would resist the temptation to try and turn them and just let them cook through.

While they are cooking, slice the ends of the plantain and vertically score one side of each from tip to top. Wrap up the plantain tight with foil and stick it towards the bottom of the oven, to cook alongside the falafel, or prepare now and save to cook on the BBQ.

For the lime and coriander hummus, follow this Guac & Roll hummus recipe, but  instead of lemon juice, pomegranate seeds and paprika, add lime juice and stick with the coriander.

The falafel and plantain should be ready at the same time, so either allow to cool and pack up for a BBQ or begin stacking into pitta breads for a quick, light lunch in the sunshine, sans moan!

Superhero food: Roasted hazelnut, pomegranate and radish salad

Radishes make me really happy. There, I said it. I love the colour pop, I love the spicy crunch and I love their tree-trunk pattern. They're also a great source of that infamous vitamin B6 everyone keeps asking me about. I teamed up them with hazelnuts, which are also rich in protein and a load of other B vitamins, but mainly because I love the taste of hazelnuts that lingers between sweet and savoury, which is made even more apparent when toasting. Pile 'em on fellas and get crunching!

I made this salad for brunch with soft polenta, roasted mushrooms and grilled tomatoes. I also added some pomegranate molasses for a dressing but I think it works just as well left plain and extra refreshing.

Makes enough for four as a side dish

200g hazelnuts
1 handful of radishes
2 inches cucumber
Pomegrante seeds from half a pomegranate
Different types of salad leaves

In a dry pan, toast the hazelnuts on a low heat for about 3-5 minutes. You'll know when they are ready as they will start to brown and you will be able to smell the oil from the nuts toasting.

Keeping an eye on the nuts, slice the radishes and cucumber and arrange with the salad leaves. Sprinkle the pomegranate seeds on top.

Roughly chop the nuts- leaving some whole, and place over the salad, mixing a little to make sure all the good stuff doesn't roll to the bottom if you're using a salad bowl.

Serve with warm polenta, juicy mushrooms or just the pomegranate molasses for a tasty wake-up call.

Notes from a vegan picnic

At the start of the month Amelie had a picnic to celebrate her birthday and it was a BONANZA. I was running preeeety late by the time I got to the park, having decided to make homemade pizza and guacamole with pomegranate seeds half an hour before the picnic started. But it didn't matter- there was a feast to get through...

Amelie and Ruth had made falafel, potato salad with purple potatoes and vegan soy cream, homemade hummus with homemade tahini (mind blown), hard lemonade (it involved gin) and a whole lot of other stuff I can't remember, probably because of the hard lemonade. Joe and Becca made some amazing cous cous salads and an aubergine and tomato sort of stew with so much olive oil it was the richest, tastiest thing I think I've ever eaten at a picnic.

We finished with a gluten free, vegan birthday cake made by Ruth. Happy belated Birthday Amelie!!

Paprika, pomegranate and lemon juice hummus

"But what do you do for protein?"

I've never made hummus before. It might sound ridiculous considering I eat chickpeas nearly every day now, but I always thought it was slightly more complicated than it was, a little bit trickier, a bit more expensive. In actual fact all you need is a reliable hand blender (no explosions please), some chickpeas, a bit of tahini, and anything else you want to flavour it with.

Naturally, I went a bit overboard for my first attempt, so added pomegranate seeds, paprika, pomegranate molasses, coriander and lemon to mine, but it might be better to focus on just one of those flavours. This batch of hummus lasted precisely 2 hours in my flat, so I guess the proof was in the total lack of leftovers!

Makes enough for 4
Ingredients
2 tins chickpeas, drained
2 garlic cloves, chopped small (if using a hand blender, or just crushed if using a larger blender as this will be able to handle the harder work)
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 pinch of salt
1 large tbsp tahini paste
2 tbsp water
Juice 1/2 lemon
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp paprika
Seeds of half a pomegranate
Handful of chopped coriander

Pour the majority of the chickpeas into a mixing bowl, holding back a small handful or so for serving. Add the garlic, cumin, salt, tahini, water, lemon juice, olive oil and paprika, and mix with a spoon just to get the liquid stirred in, before mixing with a hand blender.

Add more lemon juice, salt, olive oil, to taste, and then stir in a few pomegranate seeds to flavour the hummus. It should be a firm mixture, but looser than a paste.

To serve, top off with the rest of the pomegranate seeds, whole chickpeas, pomegranate molasses, coriander and a little more lemon juice.


And now for a bit of an apology for my absence:

What do I do for protein? I find it one of the strangest questions anyone can ask once you've told them you're vegan. There's a lot  more questions I'd expect- and yet 80% of the time, it comes back to this strange, peculiar obsession with protein.

Obviously, I know why people are concerned about protein- in general. I get that. I don't understand when they can hold a conversation with me and I am alive etc, why they would ask it, apart from the fact that it must be a total knee-jerk reaction, and maybe they just don't care about anything beneath asking a question back to a reply they didn't expect. Who knows. In any case, my inability to give that question a proper answer recently led to a mini hiatus from food blogging. I found myself with nothing to say apart from "Well, I eat chickpeas, everyday." Which is the truth, but it felt pretty limp in reply, especially after being told by someone I met 40 minutes beforehand that I was "unhealthy" and "selfish" for being vegan.

I didn't know how to reply, because I made a decision around a year ago not to be someone that reels off statistics when people start cross examining a vegan diet. I think if people haven't looked for those figures themselves, they become very easy to block out. I managed to do it for 22 years. In my month away from Guac and Roll I wanted to do more research, question whether writing a food blog was really the best way to start a conversation on veganism. I read a lot more studies, watched more documentaries (we need to talk about sugar, btw) but in the end, I came around full circle: I love sharing the recipes I've discovered, talking about them with friends in the park, researching where those recipes come from and adapting them to suit a vegan or vegan and gluten free diet.

There are plenty of vegan diets that are unhealthy, just as there are many, many, omnivorous diets that are also pretty unhealthy. Guac and Roll isn't ever going to be a call to arms, but hopefully something a lot more subtle.

Dinner in daylight

Oh the novelty. I have lots of recipes to share but here are a few snaps from today. At dinner. When it stopped raining/snowing/sleeting for about 40 minutes and I managed to eat a meal in sunlight. It was glorious, and then it was gone, as fast as it came.

These salads were largely inspired by a meal I had at Naomi's earlier this week, which I simply don't have enough epithets for. In short, salad leaves from Hackney, chickpea, red onion, cucumber, tomato and olive oil salad, spice-roasted cauliflower and refried chipotle beans you could have in a wrap or as a filling in a quesadilla. By the time I finished eating it was raining again.

Vegan Summer Lovin' Spicy Bean Burger

So on my journey to finding the perfect vegan burger I've so far come across falafel, chickpea burgers and red lentil and rice burgers. But no mission would be complete without a pit stop at the SPICY BEAN BURGER aka the best food on the planet.

--- Cue Scooby-Doo time warp frame---

Way back when service stations didn't have Prets and M&S Food in them, all they used to have was a Burger King and a coffee kiosk. As my whole family were vegetarian back then, the only thing we could eat out of the entire menu was the Spicy Bean Burger, and I used to dream about that burger the whole four hour car journey to our stop-off point. See, spicy bean burgers mean fun is on the horizon and that summer has just begun. At least to an eight year old me, that is.

Now I won't be eating chez Burger King anymore, but this burger recipe is based on what I can remember them tasting like. Minus the bad stuff, obvs.

This recipe will make around 10 burgers, cost about £1.50 for the ingredients you use, and fill you up so much second portions become out of the question.

Ingredients
4 tbsp vegetable/sunflower oil
1 carrot grated
1 onion diced small
1 tin (drained) cooked kidney beans
1 tin (drained) chickpeas
2 garlic cloves
1 chili
1 small tin (drained) sweetcorn
1 handful peas (frozen or fresh)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
1tsp ground coriander
Around 300g flour

Take a big mixing bowl or wok and add everything to it apart from the flour. Once thoroughly mixed in, give the burger mix a try to see if you want to add any salt or pepper, or maybe some lemon juice or extra chili. Using a hand blender or potato masher, roughly blend the mix so it can be shaped into patties, although I like to keep it so you can see some peas, sweetcorn and kidney beans in the burger.

Add around 200g of the flour, until you are able to make burger shapes in your hand, and then use the remaining 100g of flour to roll the burgers into to keep their shape together (as above).

Then heat 1 tbsp of oil and once this is hot, carefully add two burgers to the pan to fry, turning after around 3 minutes on each side. Make sure the pan doesn't get too hot- you want to cook the mixture the whole way through without burning the tops. Once your first batch is done, repeat with two more burgers, adding more oil when the pan begins to dry out.

While you're waiting for the burgers to fry (and keeping an eye on the pan at all times) you can make a quick cous cous salad like the one below, or slice up gherkins, or toast your burger buns. Whatever tickles your summer lovin' fancy!

Smashed sweet potato with basil and truffle oil

Anyone else in the UK still making curries, stews and pies despite it being July? Not a good look. 

Determined to add a bit of sunshine to SOMETHING, I've been making a few vegan dinners that look like summer, taste like winter. This smashed sweet potato is perfect to add with a vegan roast or pie, and will happily chill in the fridge for another day. 

The truffle flavouring actually comes from extra virgin olive oil flavoured with white truffle (so just extract). This means you can use a generous amount and not get an overpowering taste. Instead, this dish is just rich and full of vitamin C,vitamin B6, and a lot more health-giving than a common potato. 

Perfect with pie!

Ingredients

(Enough for two people)

2 large sweet potatoes, chopped into chunky cubes

1 tablespoon olive oil flavoured with white truffle

Loose handful of basil, chopped as fine as you want

If you're making a pie with this, get the pie in the oven first, and this can be done in the baking time.

Boil the sweet potatoes in salt water for about 15-20 minutes. Once they're over-done and squash with a little pressure from a fork, drain the water away and add the chopped basil and olive oil. Then put the lid on the saucepan and shake the pan for a few seconds. Shake until you have them smashed as much as you like. Your pie should be ready by now, so plate up! 

Summer Suppers: Courgette and pea pasta with vegan basil and parsley pesto

Courgette and pea pasta with vegan basil and parsley pesto


Inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi's Fried courgette pasta in Plenty, this is a super easy dish to put together before the sun goes down, and of course, if you make enough it just gets better for lunch the next day.


Because the sauce here is a vegan pesto, the pasta is best if it's light and not shaped to absorb much sauce - the main thing is that you use plenty of the best olive oil you can get your hands on, as that's what will bring out the flavour in the courgettes and peas.

Yields four portions, i.e. dinner for two and lunch for two.


Ingredients:
400g pasta
1 courgette, chopped into 5mm width slices on the side
1 onion, chopped and diced
Two good handfuls of peas
1 handful of basil 
1/2 handful of parsley
Olive oil
Salt and pepper


Heat a frying pan with a little oil and start to fry the courgette pieces. It's vital you don't over-crowd the pan as they will go soggy and steam each other instead of crisp up. So take your time and do in three or four batches. Leave to drain away any excess oil in a colander over a plate.


Now you're only a few minutes away from serving, so put the kettle on to boil and pour into a saucepan with the pasta to start cooking, adding salt if you want.


Without washing the frying pan, add the onions and allow to go slightly translucent, then add the peas. They'll take on the oil and juices from the onion and taste even better.


If you have a herb chopper knife, chop the basil and parsley as small as it will go, and mix with around three or four tablespoons of olive oil, and plenty of salt and pepper. If you have a hand blender you could also use this to chop the herbs, or just use the sharpest knife you have to really chop it all up tiny. You've now got your vegan pesto.


Drain the pasta and allow to cool in the pan for a few seconds. In this time you can transfer the onions, peas and courgettes into a big serving dish. Pour in the pasta and the pesto to the mix, and then give everything a good stir. Add a little extra olive oil or pepper to taste, and you're good to go.

Fix-all chickpea burgers: surviving your first BBQ as a vegan

Fix-all chickpea burgers 


Barbecuing is a bit of a foodie minefield even among hardcore meat-eaters, so it was with some trepidation that I made my way down to my first barbecue as a vegan. But I came duly prepared with these fix-all chickpea burgers and a trusty pack of Linda McCartney sausages in case of emergency (i.e. if everyone pounced on the chickpea burgers, which, of course, they did) and it was a BBQ breeeeeze.


A a vegan, the key tip to surviving any barbecue you've been invited to is to cook what you can before-hand, or be prepared to ask your host for a fresh frying pan/oven that hasn't been cooking meat. If there's already meat on the barbecue there's not much you can do, but if you've cooked your food once before, you can tuck in without causing too much fuss over at the grill. 


And the other thing to bear in mind? Barbecuing is essentially an outdoor pot-luck party. It's a great chance to bring your favourite vegan recipes for all your friends/family to try when they load up their plates. So bring extra and leave a platter for everyone to sample. 

Makes around 12 small-sized burgers


Ingredients:
1 400g tin of cooked chickpeas- drained (check the 'World Foods' aisle of your local supermarket- they're always cheaper there)
1/2 medium onion, diced
2 garlic cloves 
Handful of chopped parsley
1/4 tin chopped tomatoes, or half a jar of tomato salsa
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
Plain flour to add to consistency, around 200g.


Grab the biggest mixing bowl you can find, and add all ingredients apart from the flour. Mix in a blender or hand blender until you have a coarse paste where you can still see bits of onion and parsley. Then begin to add the flour as you mix by hand. No-one likes a crumbly burger so the burger mix needs to be strong enough to hold up a table spoon in the middle of the mixing bowl. Remember you can taste as you go- so add more pepper, herbs or oil until you're satisfied with your mixture.


Sprinkle a little flour on a side dish, take a handful of the mixture and roll it in the flour dish until it isn't sticky to touch. Then pat into a burger shape. Once you've done three or four, heat your pan with oil and place them in once hot. As long as you keep your attention on the pan, you can carry on making the burgers at the side of the stove. 


Check how your burgers are getting on every one-two minutes, and then flip over to cook on the other side, spending about three/four minutes on each side. 


Allow to cool on a plate, then box up and they're ready to go! They'll only need a few minutes on a hot grill at a barbecue, or five minutes in a hot oven. Hey presto! You survived! Just remember to nab yourself a burger before everyone else does.

P.S. I've got plenty more ideas for vegan burger recipes to try out over summer, so will be honing this recipe to perfection in the coming months. Let me know if you've got any other vegan burger recipes you can't barbecue without!