Hello all
Just wanted to say hi as I have been away for 3 weeks in Australia having a whale of a time and accordingly am very behind with this blog.
I will be getting back up to speed asap, I have one recipe to put on already (Quorn Egg Fried Rice) and am hoping to do another later this week (Sausage and Potato Pie).
Hope you are all well and enjoyed the good weather which we apparently missed, how come we are home and now it's raining again!? Sod's law!
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Monday, 11 April 2011
Sweet Potato Loaf
41/70
Hmmm.
This is most definitely not one of my favourites from the book. In fact, what happened with this recipe was me going hungry because I could not face eating more than half of my portion for tea and then the other half of the loaf getting ditched because neither of us wanted to contemplate it again.
Also, this is a rather complicated recipe in relation to the others in the book, there are a lot of ingredients in it and a lot of 'faff'. Like pre-soaking the bulgur wheat and grating the sweet potato/carrot/onion.
I thought that once mixed it actually looked and smelled like it was going to be very tasty. This is what it looked like once cooked (I had intended to take a picture of it before I put the mix in the tin but I forgot):
In theory it should be very nice, containing the aforementioned grated veg, oats, bulgur wheat, quorn mince (a minimal amount) and bound together with egg and yeast extract. In reality it is not (in our opinion) particularly enjoyable on any level. In fact it reminded me of my first foray into vegetarianism in the early 90s when all nut roasts looked and tasted like this - dry, bland and uninspiring.
It also takes a LONG time to cook. 45 minutes in the oven had my husband crying out for food after he had run home from work, unfortunately thanks to all the faff involved it took about an hour and a half from start to finish.
The final instruction was to let it stand in the tin for 5 minutes before turning out and serving but I was beyond patience by and left it for about a minute. Perhaps that is why mine crumbled when I tried to carve it into slices, as illustrated in the below picture of the dish served:
It looks like a pile of veggie stuffing and to be honest that's exactly what it tastes like.
I just did not like or enjoy any aspect of this meal and I won't be making it again. I guess every cookbook is going to have some recipes which just do not appeal and for us this is definitely one of them.
I do think if you increased the volume of quorn mince, added some chopped dried fruit and maybe used cous cous instead of the (very bloating) bulgur wheat this might be more appealing - but I am still not sure I would want to eat a whole quarter as a portion.
In terms of weight watchers points this is pretty low at 6 points a portion based on the loaf containing 4 portions. This is made up as follows: quorn (1), egg (1), wheat (1), oats (1), oil (1), sweet potato (1).
Despite the low rating and health appeal I do not think I will enforce this on my husband or myself again! We gave it a 1/10 which may seem harsh but reflects how little we enjoyed it.
Hmmm.
This is most definitely not one of my favourites from the book. In fact, what happened with this recipe was me going hungry because I could not face eating more than half of my portion for tea and then the other half of the loaf getting ditched because neither of us wanted to contemplate it again.
Also, this is a rather complicated recipe in relation to the others in the book, there are a lot of ingredients in it and a lot of 'faff'. Like pre-soaking the bulgur wheat and grating the sweet potato/carrot/onion.
I thought that once mixed it actually looked and smelled like it was going to be very tasty. This is what it looked like once cooked (I had intended to take a picture of it before I put the mix in the tin but I forgot):
In theory it should be very nice, containing the aforementioned grated veg, oats, bulgur wheat, quorn mince (a minimal amount) and bound together with egg and yeast extract. In reality it is not (in our opinion) particularly enjoyable on any level. In fact it reminded me of my first foray into vegetarianism in the early 90s when all nut roasts looked and tasted like this - dry, bland and uninspiring.
It also takes a LONG time to cook. 45 minutes in the oven had my husband crying out for food after he had run home from work, unfortunately thanks to all the faff involved it took about an hour and a half from start to finish.
The final instruction was to let it stand in the tin for 5 minutes before turning out and serving but I was beyond patience by and left it for about a minute. Perhaps that is why mine crumbled when I tried to carve it into slices, as illustrated in the below picture of the dish served:
It looks like a pile of veggie stuffing and to be honest that's exactly what it tastes like.
I just did not like or enjoy any aspect of this meal and I won't be making it again. I guess every cookbook is going to have some recipes which just do not appeal and for us this is definitely one of them.
I do think if you increased the volume of quorn mince, added some chopped dried fruit and maybe used cous cous instead of the (very bloating) bulgur wheat this might be more appealing - but I am still not sure I would want to eat a whole quarter as a portion.
In terms of weight watchers points this is pretty low at 6 points a portion based on the loaf containing 4 portions. This is made up as follows: quorn (1), egg (1), wheat (1), oats (1), oil (1), sweet potato (1).
Despite the low rating and health appeal I do not think I will enforce this on my husband or myself again! We gave it a 1/10 which may seem harsh but reflects how little we enjoyed it.
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
Quorn & Gnocchi Bake
40/70
This recipe was another pleasant surprise - one which we were not particularly relishing the prospect of trying but which turned out to actually be very nice. I do quite like gnocchi although it can be stodgy and I have had very good and very bad variations in the past. As this again involved a creamy cheese sauce I was also concerned about the calorie content, but it turned out lower in points values than I was expecting.
The quorn in this recipe is fairly minimal and for the first time seems to be more of an additional ingredient than the star of the dish. You can use either bacon or ham (as in the carbonara) and I chose to use ham here, cut into long strips. The sauce is a basic roux/bechamel base which you tip over the cooked gnocchi and wilted spinach before baking for around 25 minutes.
This is what it looked like when I put it in the oven:
I was a little worried that I ended up making the recipe with large gnocchi, about the size of a quails egg each, rather than with the smaller ones I had intended to. The recipe does not specify either way, just stating 400-500g in weight, but I felt that the smaller version would have worked best. As it happened my online grocery shop substituted the ones I had ordered for these giant ones but actually it worked very well.
I used stork to make the roux sauce (butter, flour, milk and cheese) as I had no butter in, this meant that it actually came in at slightly lower points values but the sauce worked perfectly well with this substitution so I would do this again next time to save points.
This recipe is very filling and although this served portion may look small it is actually a substantial amount:
One great tip from this recipe was to drain the gnocchi through the spinach (in a colander) thereby wilting the spinach quickly and effectively ready to whack it in the baking dish. I will definitely use that tip again, I am all for minimising washing up!
In terms of weight watchers points, based on the recipe providing 4 portions (which it does), each portion is worth 11 points as follows: gnocchi (6), cheese (2), flour (1), quorn ham (1), butter (1). This is surprisingly low in points for a main meal like this and tastes like it should be more - always a good sign!
We really liked this recipe and I will make it again, I will probably try it with smaller gnocchi to see how it compares. We gave this a 7/10.
This recipe was another pleasant surprise - one which we were not particularly relishing the prospect of trying but which turned out to actually be very nice. I do quite like gnocchi although it can be stodgy and I have had very good and very bad variations in the past. As this again involved a creamy cheese sauce I was also concerned about the calorie content, but it turned out lower in points values than I was expecting.
The quorn in this recipe is fairly minimal and for the first time seems to be more of an additional ingredient than the star of the dish. You can use either bacon or ham (as in the carbonara) and I chose to use ham here, cut into long strips. The sauce is a basic roux/bechamel base which you tip over the cooked gnocchi and wilted spinach before baking for around 25 minutes.
This is what it looked like when I put it in the oven:
And here it is once cooked:
I used stork to make the roux sauce (butter, flour, milk and cheese) as I had no butter in, this meant that it actually came in at slightly lower points values but the sauce worked perfectly well with this substitution so I would do this again next time to save points.
This recipe is very filling and although this served portion may look small it is actually a substantial amount:
One great tip from this recipe was to drain the gnocchi through the spinach (in a colander) thereby wilting the spinach quickly and effectively ready to whack it in the baking dish. I will definitely use that tip again, I am all for minimising washing up!
In terms of weight watchers points, based on the recipe providing 4 portions (which it does), each portion is worth 11 points as follows: gnocchi (6), cheese (2), flour (1), quorn ham (1), butter (1). This is surprisingly low in points for a main meal like this and tastes like it should be more - always a good sign!
We really liked this recipe and I will make it again, I will probably try it with smaller gnocchi to see how it compares. We gave this a 7/10.
Saturday, 2 April 2011
Quorn Carbonara
39/70
And so, this classic pasta dish has never been one of my favourites, nor one of my husbands. For some reason creamy pasta sauces are not really too appealing to me and I also tend to avoid them because of the fat content, but in the name of this experiment I this week decided the time was nigh to confront the carbonara.
The quorn in this recipe can be either ham or bacon cut into strips. I chose to use the bacon and it was the first time I had used this particular quorn product, I have to say we were mighty impressed with it and it managed to eradicate a very bad memory from years ago of the last time we tried any kind of veggie bacon (think pink cardboard). It stays a nice texture even when fried off and tastes of a lovely smoky bacon flavour - it worked really well in this dish.
I have to say the pair of us were very pleasantly surprised by this pasta dish and enjoyed it way more than we were expecting to. I loved the fact that this is a very quick dish to create and from start to finish it took me around the predicted 20 minutes. I opted to use low fat creme fraiche and that also cut the fat - it came out lower in points than I was expecting too - so all round a success!
This is the carbonara in the pan as I was stirring through the sauce at the end:
And this is the dish served:
You can see that I used tagliatelle rather than the suggested spaghetti, this was simply because I had a packet of fresh tagliatelle in the fridge but I think it works well with this creamy sauce as there is more surface area for it to stick to.
The recipe is simple although I did not follow the suggested timings due to using fresh rather than dried pasta. Firstly you saute off the bacon/ham strips until they are slightly coloured (I did this using low fat oil spray to avoid extra points while boiling water for the pasta), then you make the sauce by combining the creme fraiche, grated hard cheese (I used grana padano), eggs, nutmeg and some black pepper. Once the pasta is cooked you simply drain it, put it back in the hot pan and stir through both the bacon and the sauce.
The heat of the pan and the pasta cooks the raw egg in the sauce so you do not need to worry about this, it leaves you with a silky, creamy sauce and with the quorn bacon it really does capture the classic carbonara flavours.
In terms of weight watchers points, each portion is worth only 13 points which is pretty low considering the style of dish and the creamy sauce. This is broken down as follows: pasta (6), creme fraiche (2), quorn (2), cheese (2), egg (1).
We gave this dish 7/10 which is higher than I was expecting it to score, I will likely make it again aswell because it was actually very tasty and lower in points than I thought. Nice one quorn!
And so, this classic pasta dish has never been one of my favourites, nor one of my husbands. For some reason creamy pasta sauces are not really too appealing to me and I also tend to avoid them because of the fat content, but in the name of this experiment I this week decided the time was nigh to confront the carbonara.
The quorn in this recipe can be either ham or bacon cut into strips. I chose to use the bacon and it was the first time I had used this particular quorn product, I have to say we were mighty impressed with it and it managed to eradicate a very bad memory from years ago of the last time we tried any kind of veggie bacon (think pink cardboard). It stays a nice texture even when fried off and tastes of a lovely smoky bacon flavour - it worked really well in this dish.
I have to say the pair of us were very pleasantly surprised by this pasta dish and enjoyed it way more than we were expecting to. I loved the fact that this is a very quick dish to create and from start to finish it took me around the predicted 20 minutes. I opted to use low fat creme fraiche and that also cut the fat - it came out lower in points than I was expecting too - so all round a success!
This is the carbonara in the pan as I was stirring through the sauce at the end:
And this is the dish served:
You can see that I used tagliatelle rather than the suggested spaghetti, this was simply because I had a packet of fresh tagliatelle in the fridge but I think it works well with this creamy sauce as there is more surface area for it to stick to.
The recipe is simple although I did not follow the suggested timings due to using fresh rather than dried pasta. Firstly you saute off the bacon/ham strips until they are slightly coloured (I did this using low fat oil spray to avoid extra points while boiling water for the pasta), then you make the sauce by combining the creme fraiche, grated hard cheese (I used grana padano), eggs, nutmeg and some black pepper. Once the pasta is cooked you simply drain it, put it back in the hot pan and stir through both the bacon and the sauce.
The heat of the pan and the pasta cooks the raw egg in the sauce so you do not need to worry about this, it leaves you with a silky, creamy sauce and with the quorn bacon it really does capture the classic carbonara flavours.
In terms of weight watchers points, each portion is worth only 13 points which is pretty low considering the style of dish and the creamy sauce. This is broken down as follows: pasta (6), creme fraiche (2), quorn (2), cheese (2), egg (1).
We gave this dish 7/10 which is higher than I was expecting it to score, I will likely make it again aswell because it was actually very tasty and lower in points than I thought. Nice one quorn!
Friday, 25 March 2011
Sweet Potato Curry
38/70
This thai style curry is again from the 'Little Chefs' section at the back of the cookbook - recipes designed to be easy for kids to help with. It is indeed a very simple curry recipe but it works very nicely and the sweet potato gives it a lovely flavour.
Essentially, this curry is just red thai curry paste and coconut milk with a bag of quorn pieces and 300g of sweet potato chunks in it. Very simple indeed. The fresh coriander stirred in at the end gives it an authentic flavour and works very well. We felt that the quorn was not overly strong in flavour in this recipe but the sweet potato worked very well. The recipe calls for only half a tblsp of the thai paste but we used 2 tbslp knowing our preference for spicy food.
This recipe could benefit from the addition of some lemongrass and fresh garlic, but for a quick and simply curry it is perfectly adequate and quite enjoyable.
This is the curry served with basmati rice:
In terms of weight watchers points, this is quite a good recipe considering the coconut milk (I used a light version anyway). Based on this recipe making 4 portions, each serving is 13 points including a standard portion of rice. This is broken down as follows: rice (6), quorn (2), coconut milk (3), curry paste (2).
We quite enjoyed this and as a quick and healthy meal we would probably make it again, all be it with some tweaks to add intensity to the flavours. We gave it a 7/10.
This thai style curry is again from the 'Little Chefs' section at the back of the cookbook - recipes designed to be easy for kids to help with. It is indeed a very simple curry recipe but it works very nicely and the sweet potato gives it a lovely flavour.
Essentially, this curry is just red thai curry paste and coconut milk with a bag of quorn pieces and 300g of sweet potato chunks in it. Very simple indeed. The fresh coriander stirred in at the end gives it an authentic flavour and works very well. We felt that the quorn was not overly strong in flavour in this recipe but the sweet potato worked very well. The recipe calls for only half a tblsp of the thai paste but we used 2 tbslp knowing our preference for spicy food.
This recipe could benefit from the addition of some lemongrass and fresh garlic, but for a quick and simply curry it is perfectly adequate and quite enjoyable.
This is the curry served with basmati rice:
In terms of weight watchers points, this is quite a good recipe considering the coconut milk (I used a light version anyway). Based on this recipe making 4 portions, each serving is 13 points including a standard portion of rice. This is broken down as follows: rice (6), quorn (2), coconut milk (3), curry paste (2).
We quite enjoyed this and as a quick and healthy meal we would probably make it again, all be it with some tweaks to add intensity to the flavours. We gave it a 7/10.
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Quorn Moussaka
37/70
This dish is my nemesis.
About 5 years ago we had an absolutely delicious roasted vegetable moussaka at a friend's for dinner. It was so good in fact that being a lovely person she allowed us to take what was left home for tea the next day. We enjoyed it immensely and it spurred me on to create a version myself (how hard could it be? right?).
What followed was a couple of years where I recreated this dish every 6 months or so and every single time (different recipes/methods) it was BAD. The veg would go soggy. It would be abominably bland. It would have the consistency of gruel. My husband began to FEAR the moussaka. I began to hate it.
About a year ago I tried again with a quorn based recipe I found online....the results led to my husband pleading with me never to ever make moussaka again. I was inclined to agree with him because on that occasion it was just downright unpleasant and neither of us finished it.
So....when I saw that there was a moussaka in this book its fair to say I freaked out a little....and this weekend just gone I finally tackled the beast!
Unfortunately, I still seem to be jinxed - this is the first recipe in the book where there are two glaring errors in the text which left me confused. I also managed to buy the wrong kind of milk (condensed instead of evaporated) which caused a panic halfway through cooking and rapid googling for a solution. But overall, as far as moussakas go in this house, this was a massive improvement.
This is the moussaka as it came out the oven, it looks pretty good (or at least I thought so):
The recipe is one of the most technically complicated in the book so far and has a pretty extensive ingredients list. This is where my first issue with the recipe arose as in the list of ingredients is a tin of puy lentils with the word (optional) in brackets. I happened to have a tin in the cupboard so intended on adding this....however, the lentils are then never referred to in the recipe text. Rather than taking a flyer on when to add them therefore, I simply left them out. This is clearly an omission of the recipe writers though.
I grilled my aubergine slices first, rather than after starting the mince mixture as is suggested in the recipe text. I wanted to be able to just get on with mixing everything else together so I simply put the aubergine to one side before ploughing on with the base sauce.
The base sauce is pretty straightforward, onion, garlic and carrots are gently fried until soft, the mince and seasonings are added along with the tomatoes and bob's your uncle. The recipe states to bring this to the boil - I found there was not enough fluid to do so and added half the tomato tin of boiled water and this did the trick. Easy enough.
Now for the sauce....
It was at this point that I realised I had bought the wrong type of milk. The tins are all the same for the carnation brand and I had therefore picked up condensed milk (which is heavily sweetened and intended for desserts) rather than evaporated. I googled and discovered this was not going to be a suitable exchange and then realised I would need to create a basic bechemel to substitute for it.
While I was doing this I spotted the 2nd error (or lack of clarity) in the recipe. Had I had the necessary evaporated milk the recipe tells me to make up the 410g tin to a litre by adding water. Ok - that's fine. Except that a little further down it states to add the 40g of cornflour to '6 tblsp of the milk'. Does it mean normal milk which is not listed in the ingredients? (which is a method used in other recipes in this book with cornflour). Or does it mean 6 tblsp of the evaporated milk and water mixture?
Anyway, this milk confusion was, for me, beside the point as I had had to abandon the sauce mix from the book and create a bechemel from scratch. Thankfully this sauce turned out to be absolutely fine and worked well.
This is the moussaka as served:
The recipe suggests it makes 4-6 portions. I would say it is 4 portions as a main meal without accompaniment, 6 portions if you are serving with bread or a salad on the side. The portion shown above is a quarter of the entire dish.
Amazingly we actually did enjoy this dish although after years of my terrible attempts my husband was a bit jaded about it and said it is 'like lasagne but not as nice'. I sort of see what he is saying. This is a nice dish, it tastes ok (and compared to my previous attempts its a vast improvement!) but it is not so great I will make it again and neither is it particularly inspiring to me.
In terms of weight watchers points, one portion (based on the recipe serving 4) contains 13 points as follows (I have based this on the actual sauce from the recipe not the one I ended up making): quorn mince (2), evaporated milk (3), flour (2), butter (2), oil (2), cornflour (2).
We decided that for us this recipe was a 6/10. Not a high scorer from the book for us but in terms of a moussaka in this household quite an achievement. If you are a big fan of this dish then you may enjoy it more than we did. It is a pretty healthy version considering the rich sauce so do give it a go.
This dish is my nemesis.
About 5 years ago we had an absolutely delicious roasted vegetable moussaka at a friend's for dinner. It was so good in fact that being a lovely person she allowed us to take what was left home for tea the next day. We enjoyed it immensely and it spurred me on to create a version myself (how hard could it be? right?).
What followed was a couple of years where I recreated this dish every 6 months or so and every single time (different recipes/methods) it was BAD. The veg would go soggy. It would be abominably bland. It would have the consistency of gruel. My husband began to FEAR the moussaka. I began to hate it.
About a year ago I tried again with a quorn based recipe I found online....the results led to my husband pleading with me never to ever make moussaka again. I was inclined to agree with him because on that occasion it was just downright unpleasant and neither of us finished it.
So....when I saw that there was a moussaka in this book its fair to say I freaked out a little....and this weekend just gone I finally tackled the beast!
Unfortunately, I still seem to be jinxed - this is the first recipe in the book where there are two glaring errors in the text which left me confused. I also managed to buy the wrong kind of milk (condensed instead of evaporated) which caused a panic halfway through cooking and rapid googling for a solution. But overall, as far as moussakas go in this house, this was a massive improvement.
This is the moussaka as it came out the oven, it looks pretty good (or at least I thought so):
The recipe is one of the most technically complicated in the book so far and has a pretty extensive ingredients list. This is where my first issue with the recipe arose as in the list of ingredients is a tin of puy lentils with the word (optional) in brackets. I happened to have a tin in the cupboard so intended on adding this....however, the lentils are then never referred to in the recipe text. Rather than taking a flyer on when to add them therefore, I simply left them out. This is clearly an omission of the recipe writers though.
I grilled my aubergine slices first, rather than after starting the mince mixture as is suggested in the recipe text. I wanted to be able to just get on with mixing everything else together so I simply put the aubergine to one side before ploughing on with the base sauce.
The base sauce is pretty straightforward, onion, garlic and carrots are gently fried until soft, the mince and seasonings are added along with the tomatoes and bob's your uncle. The recipe states to bring this to the boil - I found there was not enough fluid to do so and added half the tomato tin of boiled water and this did the trick. Easy enough.
Now for the sauce....
It was at this point that I realised I had bought the wrong type of milk. The tins are all the same for the carnation brand and I had therefore picked up condensed milk (which is heavily sweetened and intended for desserts) rather than evaporated. I googled and discovered this was not going to be a suitable exchange and then realised I would need to create a basic bechemel to substitute for it.
While I was doing this I spotted the 2nd error (or lack of clarity) in the recipe. Had I had the necessary evaporated milk the recipe tells me to make up the 410g tin to a litre by adding water. Ok - that's fine. Except that a little further down it states to add the 40g of cornflour to '6 tblsp of the milk'. Does it mean normal milk which is not listed in the ingredients? (which is a method used in other recipes in this book with cornflour). Or does it mean 6 tblsp of the evaporated milk and water mixture?
Anyway, this milk confusion was, for me, beside the point as I had had to abandon the sauce mix from the book and create a bechemel from scratch. Thankfully this sauce turned out to be absolutely fine and worked well.
This is the moussaka as served:
The recipe suggests it makes 4-6 portions. I would say it is 4 portions as a main meal without accompaniment, 6 portions if you are serving with bread or a salad on the side. The portion shown above is a quarter of the entire dish.
Amazingly we actually did enjoy this dish although after years of my terrible attempts my husband was a bit jaded about it and said it is 'like lasagne but not as nice'. I sort of see what he is saying. This is a nice dish, it tastes ok (and compared to my previous attempts its a vast improvement!) but it is not so great I will make it again and neither is it particularly inspiring to me.
In terms of weight watchers points, one portion (based on the recipe serving 4) contains 13 points as follows (I have based this on the actual sauce from the recipe not the one I ended up making): quorn mince (2), evaporated milk (3), flour (2), butter (2), oil (2), cornflour (2).
We decided that for us this recipe was a 6/10. Not a high scorer from the book for us but in terms of a moussaka in this household quite an achievement. If you are a big fan of this dish then you may enjoy it more than we did. It is a pretty healthy version considering the rich sauce so do give it a go.
Monday, 14 March 2011
Cheese & Onion Quorn Burgers
36/70
This recipe comes from the 'Little Chefs' section of the book, right at the back, containing 3 recipes you can make with the kids. I can see why this one would appeal as it involves getting your hands mucky and shaping the burgers which is quite good fun (although I did it without any help from any children!).
We were really impressed with these burgers and despite the fact you can pick up pretty good quorn burgers fresh or frozen and cook them so conveniently quickly, I would consider making these again if we were having a veggie friendly barbeque. This is because they are so fab tasting and feel like a gourmet burger.
When we were in Berlin last year we visited a couple of their specialist veggie fast food shops (I so wish we had more of these in the UK), two which are worthy of a specific mention were Yellow Sunshine in trendy Kreuzberg and Vego Foodworld in Prenzlauer Berg. Both serve fantastic vegan burgers, wraps, kebabs, pizzas and all sorts of other tasty junk food (!) which can be eaten on site or taken away.....these quorn burgers reminded us of meals we ate in these places, veggie - but a little bit special!
Firstly, here is a picture of the burger mix once everything was together in one bowl and I was about to start shaping:
The burger mix is essentially quorn mince, breadcrumbs (the recipe calls for wholemeal but I used ciabatta as I had some in the freezer), softened onion and rosemary, marmite dissolved in boiling water, egg, soft cheese and grated cheddar. It makes, as you can see, a very sticky and quite wet mixture although it does take a lot of stirring to get it to this point and it is essential that the soft cheese is distributed evenly all the way through it.
The recipe states that this mix makes approximately 8 burgers of a 2cm depth each. I used a round metal cookie cutter to shape mine, pushing a handful of mix into it quite firmly so that my burgers looked like this:
The mix made 5 substantial burgers for me but obviously you could have smaller and more if you shaped them differently. I was impressed at how the mix held its shape at this stage - although you do have to be a little careful with them.
You then fry them in a little oil for around 4 minutes on each side. Make sure the pan is hot before you start as they seal very well if you do this and you lessen the risk of them falling apart (we had very little problem with this). Here is what they look like once flipped, you can see that they brown quite noticably, keep an eye on them and watch the time, the 4 mins per side seems to be bang on to me.
So, once they have had the necessary cooking time you can transfer them to your bread rolls or pittas. This is what they look like served in baps and then as I ate them (thinking of weight watchers) with half a bap each.
Verdict? Absolutely delicous and well worth the faff. The texture is pretty amazing and so much more like a meat burger than the pre-made standard veggie burgers you can buy. The cheese in them really stands out and gives these a really deep and rich flavour which is also juicy and intense. The seasoning could be easily adapted in the recipe, I added a pinch of chilli to ours and it worked really well so feel free to tinker when you cook off the onion with the herbs at the beginning of the recipe.
In terms of weight watchers points, the entire recipe works out as 22 points based on the following: quorn mince (4), oil (4), breadcrumbs (4), grated cheddar (5), low fat soft cheese (2), egg (2), marmite (1). The reason I have given you the full recipe points is that you may make more or less burgers than I did, divide the 22 by the number of burgers so that it is right for you.
My husband was determined these got a 10/10 and I have to say I am in agreement with him on this occasion. A clever, enjoyable recipe to make and a delightful end result to make a burger which could deservedly and proudly compete with meat products - but with the added benefit of containing considerably less fat!
This is definitely one I will make again and has been one of the best recipes to date from the book.
This recipe comes from the 'Little Chefs' section of the book, right at the back, containing 3 recipes you can make with the kids. I can see why this one would appeal as it involves getting your hands mucky and shaping the burgers which is quite good fun (although I did it without any help from any children!).
We were really impressed with these burgers and despite the fact you can pick up pretty good quorn burgers fresh or frozen and cook them so conveniently quickly, I would consider making these again if we were having a veggie friendly barbeque. This is because they are so fab tasting and feel like a gourmet burger.
When we were in Berlin last year we visited a couple of their specialist veggie fast food shops (I so wish we had more of these in the UK), two which are worthy of a specific mention were Yellow Sunshine in trendy Kreuzberg and Vego Foodworld in Prenzlauer Berg. Both serve fantastic vegan burgers, wraps, kebabs, pizzas and all sorts of other tasty junk food (!) which can be eaten on site or taken away.....these quorn burgers reminded us of meals we ate in these places, veggie - but a little bit special!
Firstly, here is a picture of the burger mix once everything was together in one bowl and I was about to start shaping:
The burger mix is essentially quorn mince, breadcrumbs (the recipe calls for wholemeal but I used ciabatta as I had some in the freezer), softened onion and rosemary, marmite dissolved in boiling water, egg, soft cheese and grated cheddar. It makes, as you can see, a very sticky and quite wet mixture although it does take a lot of stirring to get it to this point and it is essential that the soft cheese is distributed evenly all the way through it.
The recipe states that this mix makes approximately 8 burgers of a 2cm depth each. I used a round metal cookie cutter to shape mine, pushing a handful of mix into it quite firmly so that my burgers looked like this:
The mix made 5 substantial burgers for me but obviously you could have smaller and more if you shaped them differently. I was impressed at how the mix held its shape at this stage - although you do have to be a little careful with them.
You then fry them in a little oil for around 4 minutes on each side. Make sure the pan is hot before you start as they seal very well if you do this and you lessen the risk of them falling apart (we had very little problem with this). Here is what they look like once flipped, you can see that they brown quite noticably, keep an eye on them and watch the time, the 4 mins per side seems to be bang on to me.
So, once they have had the necessary cooking time you can transfer them to your bread rolls or pittas. This is what they look like served in baps and then as I ate them (thinking of weight watchers) with half a bap each.
Verdict? Absolutely delicous and well worth the faff. The texture is pretty amazing and so much more like a meat burger than the pre-made standard veggie burgers you can buy. The cheese in them really stands out and gives these a really deep and rich flavour which is also juicy and intense. The seasoning could be easily adapted in the recipe, I added a pinch of chilli to ours and it worked really well so feel free to tinker when you cook off the onion with the herbs at the beginning of the recipe.
In terms of weight watchers points, the entire recipe works out as 22 points based on the following: quorn mince (4), oil (4), breadcrumbs (4), grated cheddar (5), low fat soft cheese (2), egg (2), marmite (1). The reason I have given you the full recipe points is that you may make more or less burgers than I did, divide the 22 by the number of burgers so that it is right for you.
My husband was determined these got a 10/10 and I have to say I am in agreement with him on this occasion. A clever, enjoyable recipe to make and a delightful end result to make a burger which could deservedly and proudly compete with meat products - but with the added benefit of containing considerably less fat!
This is definitely one I will make again and has been one of the best recipes to date from the book.
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