Those of you who follow me on Facebook know that today I set myself a challenge to see if I could make broccoli and cauliflower patties. My cauli was going off and my toddler lives for broccoli so I thought I’d try and get creative. Very unlike me because usually I need a recipe, but I thought I’d wing this. And it totally paid off!
The ingredients that I’m going to lay out below are very approximate. At the end of the process you are going to have a very wet batter, but it should be sturdy enough to hold its pattie shape. I definitely couldn’t have fried these, they went on baking paper into the oven.
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- A small head of broccoli
- Half a small cauliflower
- A little less than a quarter of a kent pumpkin I really don’t know how much I used and I don’t think it really matters – see the pic below for guidance
- Two handfuls of grated cheese (I used tasty but you could use parmesan cheddar, whatevs)
- Three spring onions thinly sliced
- 1 egg
- 1 tbls tahini
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 cup besan flour chickpea, now I think this gave it a really lovely texture and flavour but if you don’t have it then I’m sure normal flour would do you fine
- 1 chickpeas tin drained and rinsed
- 2 cups breadcrumbs (use GF breadcrumbs if you are making this a gluten free dish. I used the end of a spelt sourdough loaf that I had in the freezer)
- salt and pepper
- 2 in small tins of tunaoil
- 1 1/2 avocados
- large handful of danish fetta
- juice of 1 lemon
Ingredients
For The Patties
For The Tuna And Avo Smash
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- Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.
- You gotta steam the veggies first to make them nice and soft. So break the broccoli and cauli into florets and slice your pumpkin thinly so they will all be ready at the same time. I used my thermomix and I cooked at Varoma temp, speed 1 for 18 minutes.
- Once they are nice and soft you throw them into a food processor along with the flour, cumin, spring onion, cheese, tahini and egg and whizz it around until the consistency is smooth. In thermomix speed 4 for 10 seconds. I thought this was all I needed to do for my patties until I realised it was way too runny and I needed something more. So I added the tin of chickpeas. Speed 4 for 5 seconds
- It was definitely starting to come together but it didn’t have that real ‘pattie’ feel. I removed the mixture out of thermie into a bowl and ended up using what I had been trying to avoid – breadcrumbs! I found this piece of spelt sourdough at the back of the freezer.
- So I broke it up into four pieces and used thermie to make breadcrumbs. A few seconds later it looked like this.
- And after stirring it into the mixture it was definitely where I wanted it. It looked like this – bit sticky and firmer than before.
- So I lay a piece of baking paper onto a baking tray, oiled it and made my patties. Some’ big people size’, others ‘little people size’. Then I drizzled more oil over the top (I used macadamia oil but olive oil would be fine) and put it into an oven at 200 degrees.
- My oven is crappola and so these times may not be the same for you. I turned my patties over after 15 minutes. This is what they looked like on the other side. I knew I was on a winner at this point!
- I added a little more oil because it had all soaked up. And cooked on the other side for another 15-20 minutes. The result was a crispy on the outside and lovely and soft on the inside vegetable patty. DELICIOUS!
- I put them on a bed of spinach leaves and topped with the tuna and avo smash. To make that, just put all the ingredients into a bowl and smash away, pretty self explanatory. Go hard with the lemon juice – don’t hold back.
Everyone from my ten month old to my husband liked this dinner. In fact Nick said he’d pay money for it in a cafe (as opposed to my other meals….?!). It was so yummy. You could really put anything alongside the patties – it doesn’t have to be the tuna smash. We finished the last few off with just a bit of salt. I reckon they’d freeze well, so perfect for school lunches and picnics.
You gotta love when a two year old is eating a healthy dinner (even if he does have to sit on daddy’s knee to do so…..)
Let me know if you make them.
Enjoy x