Black Bean and Rice Mini-Burgers

Returning to a dish I've cooked a few times before, I decided to play around with my black bean cake recipe. This is a pretty easy dish, and if you take out the rice it requires a lot less time. I also got to use a new, awesomely named, ingredient - dinosaur kale! The meal pictured below isn't the most balanced, but luckily it produces a lot of extra kale/mushrooms/etc to eat on the side.

Not pictured: ketchup used as topping when I realized just how dry they were without it.

Black Bean and Rice Mini-Burgers (makes 8 patties which serves 2-ish, takes 1 hour, or 30 minutes without the rice in the patties):

• 1 can black beans, drained (15 oz was the size I used)
• 1/3 cup uncooked rice
• 1/3 cup walnuts
• 1 tbsp flaxseed meal
• 2 tbsp corn meal + a lot more on the side
• 1 tbsp stone ground mustard
• pinch of salt
• pinch of sage
• pinch of cumin
• 1 red pepper sliced into circles
• 1 yellow squash sliced into circles
• 1 bunch dinosaur kale, cut down to burger-sized pieces
• a few trumpet royale mushrooms, sliced into strips

Cook the rice as per instructions. While the rice cools a bit, mash the beans in a mixing bowl with a fork. You want a few beans to survive the massacre but otherwise create something like a goop of beans. Add in the flaxseed and corn meal, stir. Crush the walnuts in your hand and add into the mixture, as well as the rice, and stir. Add in the mustard, salt, sage, and cumin, mixing until it is somewhat uniform.

Prepare the toppings - sautee the mushrooms with a punch of salt, bake the peppers and squash in a 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, and sautee the kale with some lime juice or other flavor enhancer. To make this easier, you can do this while the rice cooks and put everything in a warm oven for 5 minutes right before serving.

On a work surface, dump a generous heaping of corn meal. Something like 1/2 cup at least. Form a patty of the bean mixture in your hand and generously cover one side with corn meal. Flip it over in your hand and coat the other side, then flip it over again to shake off the excess cornmeal. I made 8 patties with the recipe, but you can size them as you want. Keep them thin if you want to cook them in a pan, but they can be thicker if you want to bake them.

For stovetop (preferred): In a large frying pan, add oil and set to medium heat. Drop patties in, flipping after 7-10 minutes when they have solidified a tad and adding a splash more oil. Let cook another 7-10 minutes until the bottoms are a nice shade of brown, flip and give it 2-5 more. You can stop cooking them earlier, but they will fall apart easily if you do.

For oven (takes longer): Preheat oven to 375. Place patties on lightly greased baking sheet and cook for 15 minutes, flip, and cook for 15 minutes more. They will not change in color much but will solidify quite a bit. If you don't think they are baked enough, another 15 minutes won't hurt.

Top with kale, mushroom, pepper, then squash. You will probably want some form of sauce/liquid topping, as otherwise the meal will be quite dry. I recommend either ketchup, mustard, pesto, or hummus. All work well.