Spicy chickpea burgers - nom nom nommety nom......

Hello Friends,
I've been meaning to share the link to this recipe for the longest time, but seed-sowing time just seems to have taken over and I'm spending lots of time in the greenhouse & not much on the laptop.
I promised one or two people the details of this recipe, so here goes.

I love making these.....& eating them. They are really tasty & filling in a home baked bread roll & I like a dollop of my pineapple chutney & an enormous salad with mine. It's a Delia recipe - I first came across it in her vegetarian cook book which my parents bought for the Big Hairy Half of the Relationship before he fell off the veggie waggon & started walking around town with his nose pressed to butchers' shop windows, dreaming of humoungous rib-eyes.

The recipe appears on her website here . These burgers are really easy to make. You just need to remember to put the dried chickpeas in water the day before, so they can soak overnight. Then you start by bringing them to the boil & simmering until tender, before draining them. They don't take as long as you think, maybe about 40-45 mins or so. 

In the meantime, you can be getting the rest of the ingredients together. The onions, garlic, green pepper & spices are cooked together & smell fab, as the spices are first toasted a little in a non-stick pan to bring out the flavour.

When everything's ready, pretty much all that needs doing is plopping it all into a food processor with the remaining ingredients such as lemon zest, 3 tbsp yoghurt & a bit of seasoning , then blending it together. You want a consistency that will form into burgers, but to leave a bit of texture in the chickpeas.....no need to blend the living daylights out of it. 

Then it's simply sleeves up time, & forming the spicy mixture into 8 burgers. I just do them with my hands as I don't own any sort of la-di-dah burger press. Next 2 plates....one with a beaten egg on it & one with some wholemeal flour, & you just dunk each burger first in the egg, then in the flour to coat........

......at which point they look like this. I pack them into containers at this stage & freeze them. They freeze really well, but as they cook best from frozen, remember to freeze them so that they're not touching. I just fry them in a little oil when they go a lovely golden colour & smell yum. Sorry I haven't got a pretty picture of one sitting in a hand-shaped bun artistically garnished with rocket & red onion rings - that was my intention but we had scoffed them before I remembered!

This is the book we have, but I think the chickpea burgers may feature in others of Delia's books too. They hit all the buttons for me....easy, nutritious, tasty & cheap! Could eat one now......shame it's an 800 calorie day today.........Booooooo! How DO people doing the 5:2 Diet manage on 500? I would be so hungry I'd be dipping into Albert Whisker's biscuits, I'm sure!
Anyway, that's it. Recipe shared!
Cheers,
C x