Curried Lentil and Quinoa Burger with Tomato Chutney and Baked Potato Fries

A Cafe Flora recipe. Which reminds me, if you've never been there, GO! Case and I are non-vegetarians. (Give up BLTs?!) But this restaurant is very good. I appreciate vegetarian cooking infinitely more when they aren't using meat recipes and substituting tofu for the meat. Cooking vegetarian should really make you go out of your box in terms of using different ingredients, spices, herbs. Making unique dishes...

I loved the chutney in this recipe. It's absurdly easy and quick to make, and good on pretty much anything. The 'burgers' didn't hold together for shit, though. So it turned out to be more of a sloppy joe style burger, fine by me. It probably would've been fine had I added an egg (even though the recipe didn't call for one) but we were momentarily vegan.

Burger:

3/4 c. red lentils

1 bay leaf

1/2 c. quinoa

1 tsp. olive oil

1 c. diced yellow onion

1 c. diced celery

2 tsp. chopped garlic

2 tsp. salt

1/4 c. fresh parsley

1 tsp. paprika

1 tsp. curry powder

1 tsp. cumin seeds, toasted, ground

1 tsp. chili powder

1/4 c. rolled oats

2 Tb. All purpose flour

1/2 c unseasoned bread crumbs

Oil for cooking burgers

Rolls, toppings

Cook Lentils

Rinse, put in small pot with cold water and bay leaf, bring to boil, lower heat, simmer covered 10-15 minutes, add water if needed. OK if mushy.

Cook Quinoa

Bring 1 c. water to boil. Add quinoa, lower heat, simmer until water is gone - 15 minutes. Remove, cover, steam for 5 minutes, fluff!

Veggie-time

Cook onion, celery, garlic, salt, 10 minutes. Add parsley, paprika, curry powder, cumin, and chili powder. Set aside to cool.

Grind oats until they are broken up, but not as fine as flour.

Make Burgers

When ingredients are cooled, mix together. Sprinkle oats, flour and bread crumbs on top. Mix with hands. Use 1/2 c. of mixture for burger. Pan fry, 3-4 minutes per side.

Tomato Chutney

2 tsp. olive oil

2 tsp. mustard seeds

1 tsp. fennel seeds

1 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes

2 tsp. light brown sugar (I used honey)

1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes

1/2 tsp. salt

Heat oil over medium heat. Add mustard and fennel, stir until mustard pops. Add remaining ingredients, lower heat and simmer until liquid is reduced (or in my case, until you have the consistency you want). Remove from heat, set aside to cool.

As for the fries, I was watching Pantry Raid and they (he?) recommend(s) cooking the potatoes at 400 for 90 minutes. No way. That was way too long. They were super crunchy.