Black Bean and Zucchini Cutlets

I've never made my own vegetarian burgers before. As a former meat eater, veggie burgers seemed like something outside the realm of home-cooking. Reproducing something similar in texture and flavor to real meat seemed to belong more to a lab than to a kitchen. As time has gone by, however, recreating meat exactly has become less of a priority. And once again, necessity led me to try something new as I scrounged my cabinets for dinner tonight.
These are vegan. They wouldn't have been, but I used the last of my eggs in the Apple-Rum Cake. The main ingredient here is canned black beans. The recipe called for dry rolled oats and an egg, but instead I cooked some steal cut oats, which acted as a binder along with some bread crumbs, in place of the egg. The remainder of the burger mixture was just chopped onion, shredded zucchini, and spices.Instead of serving these up as patties on a bun, I formed the mixture into cutlets, pan-fried them, and served them with angel hair pasta. But there was far too much for a single meal, so I formed the remainder into patties and froze them. The resulting patties were surprisingly meaty, the steel cut oats giving them a pleasant chew and the pan-frying lending a nice crunch to the outside. Overall, the homemade veggie burger is a party that I'm glad I came to late, rather than not at all.