Sweet Potato Lentil Burgers

I had an extra sweet potato, and, while I was tempted to make another pot of soup with it and some peanut butter, I opted for something new. I did some Googling and found someone else who's done some Googling and came up with something similar to what I wanted. These red bean, sweet potato, and quinoa patties seemed great, so I took a crack at it and made a few substitutions.

1/2 cup uncooked quinoa

1/2 cup uncooked lentils

1 medium (fist-sized) sweet potato

1 medium red onion

4-5 cloves garlic

6-7 baby carrots

1-2 TB chopped fresh basil

1-2 tsp dried basil

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 TB red wine vinegar

Salt and Pepper to taste

1/4 cup uncooked couscous in lieu of breadcrumbs

This used up a lot of pots, so I inititally cooked the lentils until tender but not quite mushy. Then at the same time in different pots, I:

1. Boiled the sweet potato that I'd cut into small chunks
   
2. Cooked the quinoa


3. Cooked the onion in a little olive oil until clear, then added garlic and carrots for another few minutes.

Once done, I added them all to a bowl that could have been slightly bigger, along with the basil, vinegar, salt and pepper. I smushed the sweet potatoes on the side of the bowl and mixed everything together. I added the couscous at the end and gave it a few more stirs. Then I let it sit in the fridge for a few hours until I was ready for it.

I'm not a big fan of frying, whether it's deep or pan. After shaping into patties, I sprayed some olive oil (my mom gave me a great pump thing so it sprays just a little pure oil) on both sides and put on a baking sheet at 350 for 20-30 minutes, flipping mid-way through the cooking time. I cranked it up to 400 for the last 10 or so minutes to get it crispier. It made 7 large patties, though I ate one before I cooked it. You can easily stretch it to 8, and I calculated there are about 1000 calories in the whole batch.

I didn't have any bread, and didn't want to make roti since the patties were slightly labor intensive. So I steamed a head of cauliflower and made a cheezy cauliflower sauce for the patties. I put about 1/2 cup of the cooked cauliflower in my immersion blender attachment (a blender is fine) and added some salt, pepper, fresh cilantro, soy milk, tahini, and nutritional yeast.