matilda's marvellous chickpea burgers

Matilda, who is six going on 26, likes to help me cook. I still haven't decided if its a bad thing or not, but she watches so many youtube videos, and american cookery shows with me, that she has to narrate all of our cooking with an american voice. It goes something like this: Mattie, do you want to help me make dinner? Yes mummy: "So hi guys, here we are in our kitchen, and mom is mixing the chickpeas with - oh hang on, now she's wiping the baby's nose - and I'm cracking this egg into a bowl..." you get the picture. All spoken to the wall behind the cooker. 

We made these chickpea burgers for our invisible non-existent audience the other night, before everyone got ill again - more on this in the next post.

Mash one tin of drained chickpeas and add to them one egg, two chopped spring onions, half a finely diced green pepper, a teaspoon of garam masala, a small tin of sweetcorn, and mix. You want it to be the consistency of mince - add chickpea flour (chana dal) until you reach this consistency. I find it needs about two tablespoons, but it depends on the size of your egg, and is different every time. Then season with salt and pepper.

Heat olive oil in a frying pan, and shaping the mix into small burgers - about a tablespoons worth each - fry your burgers over a medium heat until golden brown, turning to brown evenly.

Serve in pitta breads (we have those The Food Doctor multiseed ones) with a green salad and some hummus. They're a hit with even the fussiest of eaters in our house.

Just as a footnote - we don't eat like saints every night, in case I was giving that impression! Those blogs where all that you ever see is supermodel mums serving their angelic children homegrown spinach and himalayan sea salt crusted self-caught salmon cakes in ballgowns before they go out make me feel a little queasy. No supermodels here. Rather haggard sleep deprived ones instead, and today for lunch we had pizza and oven chips, and the baby was snacking on digestives (while sat on the floor of the kitchen rummaging through my handbag). y'know, jus' keeping it real.