Vegetable fritters

Contributed by Preston Maring, MD


Vegetable fritters

Thank you, thank you Mark Bittman. He often suggests a basic recipe that can be easily modified in a variety of ways to suit the seasonal availability of vegetables and taste.  

These vegetable fritters turned out to be a great way to use some lunkers I found in my garden. Making these for the first time was kind of an adventure but with excellent results as you will see. Wonderful. 

Servings: 4 as a side dish

Ingredients

  • About 1 1/2 pounds of vegetables, peeled or not — I used the zucchini from my backyard and didn't peel them
  • 1/2 onion or equivalent amount of shallots or scallions minced
  • 2 egg whites, lightly beaten
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh herbs
  • 3/8 cup white whole wheat flour
  • Large pinch cayenne pepper
  • Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
  • 1 tablespoon high heat cooking oil of choice

Directions

  1. Grate the zucchini on the largest holes in a box grater or in your food processor. You will have about three cups firmly packed. As I grated them about five minutes after harvest, they were really, really moist. You have to wring out as much of the liquid as you can. I used a big kitchen towel.  
  2. And then chop a big handful of herbs.  I used fresh dill, mint, parsley and tarragon.  
  3. Mix everything together in a bowl.  
  4. Preheat your oven to 275 degrees to keep the fritters warm as you do them in batches.  
  5. Fry them over medium high heat.  I used a Scanpan which has a nonstick surface not made with teflon.  In the picture, you can see how the little bit of oil beads up and is probably not even needed. The next time I do these, I will eliminate the oil.  It is important to let the pan fully heat before you start frying the fritters. 
  6. Despite squeezing the grated zucchini as much as I could, there was still a lot of liquid in the bowl after mixing the ingredients. This required some flexibility in fritter technique. I firmly packed a 1/3 cup measuring cup, turned it over and squeezed out as much liquid as I could.  
  7. Knock the incipient fritter into the pan and flatten it a bit. Let it cook until golden brown and turn once. These can be served hot or at room temperature with whatever topping you prefer. I used some sriracha.