Black Bean Burgers

This dish is from the Candle 79 cookbook, which contains recipes made at the very upscale vegan restaurant Candle 79. Most of the recipes in this book either A. Would take me all day to make or B. Involve ingredients which are difficult to find and probably expensive. This was one of the simpler recipes (still much more time-consuming than my usual cooking), and the only things I omitted were a piece of kombu (sea vegetable) and I used regular chile powder instead of chipotle. 

It requires:
1.5 cups dried black beans
1.5 cups brown rice
1 cup raw pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
1 onion
Paprika, chili powder, olive oil, salt

Soak the beans overnight, drain, re-cover with water, and add a tsp of chili powder, 1 chopped onion, and a sprinkle of salt. Cook 1.5 hrs in a regular pot or about 15 min in the pressure cooker.

Meanwhile add 3 c water and a pinch of salt to the brown rice, cook 45 min in a regular pot or about 20 in the pressure cooker.

Saute the pumpkin seeds in olive oil , pinch of salt, and a tsp of paprika (the recipe called for "smoked paprika" so I added a splash of liquid smoke flavor) about 5 min on medium heat until browned.

Combine these 3 ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Take half of the mixture and puree it in the food processor, then mix it again. You should now have a not-too-goopy mix you can form into patties. Make patties about 3 inches wide and one inch thick and fry in olive oil, about 2 min on each side. Baking is also an option: grease a pan with olive oil and bake at 350, 15 min per side.

I served these initially on whole wheat buns with the traditional lettuce and ketchup. A more interesting choice would be to top them with salsa and avocado.