Bean and Millet Patty

This doesn't really count as a recipe and I am not quite prepared to photograph my food yet so it is just a description of my dinner last night.  Steven is always amazed with my thought process on how I decide on what I am making so I feel I should start documenting the madness.

It all started with a thought that I wanted to have the can of re-fried beans that was in the pantry that I had just purchased last week.  Since it didn't seem like the best idea to eat just a plate full of beans I went through the mental list of items in the fridge that needed to be eaten before it went bad.  Items in the fridge:

• Roasted veggies
• Plain Millet
• Cheese and Parsley Millet
• Spinach
• Parsley
• Spicy Pepper Cheese
• Plus quite a few staples that are always hanging out in the fridge

At this point I was overly tired of the roasted veggies because I had been eating them for lunch all week on top of a salad or in a wrap.  That is when it struck me that the millet was something that I could mix with the beans to make a patty (one of my favorite ways to eat food) out of to get some starch in there so off I went.  

Half a can re-fried beans

3/4 a cup cooked millet 

1 Tbsp ground flax seed

1 tsp ground pepper

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

1/2 cup panko bread crumbs

Mix everything together aside from the panko.  Make a small ball out of the mixture (the smaller the better so they are easier to manage) and place it in the panko. Flatten it out a bit to make a patty.  Coat both sides with panko then place them in a skillet over medium heat that has a little oil in it.   Cook both sides until golden brown.

I chose to top them with the previously mentioned spicy cheese after flipping them so it would melt and be delicious.  Then once they made it to the plate I topped them with some chopped fresh spinach for a bit of green.

Variations

These patties didn't really have much structure to them so if you aren't careful they can easily fall apart.  Perhaps next time I would add some flour our an egg to help bind everything together.  If I had some onion, garlic or peppers those probably would have been tossed in as well.  Unfortunately, the parsley did not make it in the patties, but that would have been lovely.  As with any of my dishes, the spices could be mixed up depending on your mood for the day.  Adding some curry powder could be a nice addition.