Football Food Sunday. Take 2!

It's Sunday people and that means it's football time. Woot! Okay, so I can't tell a lie I'm not very excited about the football (yep, it is still on!) but the 49ers are playing so Nick's excited & I was definitely excited about eating more delicious traditional American food... and what could be more American than a cheeseburger? Erm, a Bacon Cheeseburger perhaps?

Todays recipe came from The Best Veggie Burgers On The Planet because really where else would I go for a burger recipe now that I'm the proud owner of this awesome cookbook? I haven't had it for very long & consequently had only tried one recipe before today, the Super Quinoa Burgers. For Football Food Sunday we of course turned to the USA inspired chapter of the book & the recipe that immediately popped out at me was one for Bacon Cheeseburgers.

Now you obviously can't just eat a burger on it's own...well you could but not during MoFo & certainly not on Football Food Sunday! As I'm no longer scared of baking bread I started the day by whipping up a batch of Plain White Buns also from The Best Veggie Burgers On The Planet.

As you can see I was so proud of these that I made Nick take a picture of me with them!

PPK, represent!

These turned out amazingly well, some of them even have that bakery style crack in the middle!

These buns only need to rise for an hour & as our heating's now fixed I just popped them under the radiator.

Of course just buns & burgers didn't seem like enough so I decided to make some potato wedges to round out the meal. I didn't just want to wing it so I turned to my cookbook shelf & found a great recipe for Smoky Potato Wedges in The Complete Guide To Vegan Food Substitutions. This is yet another new(ish) cookbook & I haven't made anything from it yet. These wedges were a great start though and I now have a tonne of recipes bookmarked including the Berry Fro Yo & the White Chocolate Orange Corn Muffins.

The wedges are oven baked & far far nicer than their pre-packaged equivalent. I didn't have the potato starch called for in the recipe so I subbed 1/2 Tapioca Starch and 1/2 Cornstarch & it turned out just fine.

The TVP & wheat gluten based Bacon Cheeseburgers come together really quickly. After rehydrating the tvp in the microwave you do need to wait for it to cool a bit (I decanted it into a larger cooler bowl to speed up the process) but then you just throw the rest of the ingredients into the bowl together, kneed for 5 minutes, form into patties & slap 'em on the grill or in this case your awesome Grill & Griddle...and yes, I know, this is the third time I've mentioned it in 9 days but I think I'm actually in love with it! Check out these grill marks...

Whilst the burgers were on the grill I decided to whip up a quick batch of smoky mayonnaise to go on the burgers and as a dip for the smoky potato wedges. Terre a Terre, one of my favourite vegetarian restaurants in Brighton, makes a delicious smoked mayonnaise so I thought I'd see if I could recreate it at home.

It's definitely not the same as Terre a Terre's but I'll bet that they spent more than 4 minutes perfecting their recipe.

I mixed together approximately 3 TBS of Plamil vegan mayonnaise, 1/2 a tsp of smoked paprika & 3 dashes of liquid smoke. Voila, smokey mayonnaise!

Here's the final meal...

I actually feel really proud that I made everything on this plate except for the slice of Cheddar Cheezly & I enjoyed it all so much. I was a little worried that the burgers might be too sweet for me given that they contain both peanut butter & maple syrup but they really weren't & the smoky mayonnaise went with them perfectly. I really can't wait to make more burgers from the book, I think the Really Meaty Burger or the Seitanic Stuffer will be next but I am also very tempted by the Denver Omelet Burger. Do you have The Best Veggie Burgers On The Planet? What are your favourite recipes?

I'm already very excited about next weeks Football Food Sunday but I'll have to be patient because I have to wait a whole week & as of tomorrow it's cookbook challenge time again! See y'all tomorrow!