Lola Berry's sweet potato and quinoa patties with green tahini and lime dressing recipe

When I talk about "protein combining" for vegos, I'm basically explaining how to get protein into your diet without eating meat. One way is to combine a grain with a nut or seed so that you're getting a more complete protein. Even though quinoa is technically a seed, it has a high amino acid profile and, by adding walnuts at the end, you're increasing the amino acid profile even more and thus the amount of protein. So these burgers get the thumbs up on loads of counts: they help you get good protein, they taste fab, plus I love quinoa.

Patties

2 sweet potatoes (skin on), washed and roughly chopped

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

400g quinoa, rinsed

¼ red onion, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1 tsp ground cumin

1 fresh chilli, chopped

salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

60g crushed walnuts, to serve

Green tahini and lime dressing

2 tbsp tahini

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 avocado

juice and zest of 1 lime

½ bunch of coriander (save some leaves for serving)

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.

2. Arrange the sweet potato pieces on a baking tray, drizzle with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and bake for 20 minutes. At the same time, put 750 millilitres of water and the quinoa in a saucepan over a medium-high heat, bring it to the boil, then simmer for 15 minutes or until the quinoa is cooked and all the liquid is gone.

3. When the spuds are cooked, pop them into a large mixing bowl, add the cooked quinoa and use a fork to mash everything together. Add the onion, garlic, cumin and chilli to the mix and season with salt and pepper.

4. Shape the mixture into eight patties (you want these to look like little burger patties). Put them on a baking tray, drizzle with the remaining olive oil and bake them for 15 minutes, or until they're golden.

5. To make the dressing, whizz all the ingredients in a blender, give it whizz.

6. When the patties are cooked, dollop some tahini dressing on each one, then garnish with some coriander leaves and crushed walnuts.

Serves 4

Extract from The Happy Cookbook, by Lola Berry, published by Plum $34.99.