MUMBAI ON A BUN
Veggie burgers use chickpeas and yogurt for authentic taste.
While I was growing up, the closest thing I had to a veggie burger was aloo tikki, an enticing disc-shaped vegetable patty made with boiled mashed potatoes and whole peas.
Seasoned and then seared on a hot cast-iron pan, aloo tikki were more of a snack, something you’d encounter as part of the street-food menu everywhere in Mumbai. The hot cakes were usually topped off with chickpeas and a spicy herb sauce, with fresh chiles added for heat.
But then around 1996, McDonald’s opened its first store in India — and it brought along a McAloo Tikki burger and the Veg Maharaja Mac, served with a little mayonnaise and the usual fixings sandwiched in a bun.
Mind you, there were stark differences in the menu when the fast-food giant entered the Indian market; you couldn’t — and still can’t — find any beef or pork products on the menu.
I vividly remember the long lines outside the McDonald’s — everyone wanted to experience a part of American culture. And to many in India, an American hamburger by a classic American franchise seemed the way. And so I was introduced to my first veggie burger, a blend of American and Indian culinary influences embedded in a new landscape influenced by globalization and open markets.
These days, one of my favorite ways to make a quick veggie burger is to use a couple of cans of chickpeas and top them off with a brightpink yogurt sauce in which beets and garlic are roasted and then ground.
A couple of tricks to making a veggie burger: Don’t overdo the chopping in the food processor. A coarser grind helps to provide a “meatier” texture, and it holds it together much better. If the chickpeas are ground too much, the burger will get mushy and release a lot of liquid and will break easily.
If you don’t have a food processor, you can chop the chickpeas by hand using a potato masher or even chop them up with a knife to get a coarse texture. Make sure to drain the chickpeas of excess liquid and pat them dry.