Fabulous Vegetable Fritters ~ Recipe

I have been dying to try making some vegetable fritters after running across a recipe for zucchini ones. I LOVE zucchini but why stop at that? I had to throw in peppers, carrots, herbs, and why you could even use beets. I hadn't thought of that! Now I know what I'm going to put in next time *grin*.

So much fresh goodness with a little bit of heat from the garlic and chili sauce.... mmm, they are so good that it left all of us wanting more :)

You will need:

1 medium sized zucchini grated (about 1 pound)
1/2 a red pepper diced
2 large carrots grated
3 scallions finely sliced
A big handful of fresh parsley chopped
2 cloves of garlic crushed
6 heaping Tbsp all purpose flour
1-2 tsp. hot garlic chili sauce
2 eggs
1 cup grated parmigiano reggiano
Sea salt and pepper to taste

Start by slicing, dicing, and grating all of your vegetables. Any method of grating will do. I actually used my food processor for the zucchini since the larger shreds of zucchini it produces will cook quickly in the hot pan, while I hand grated the carrot to get it nice and fine as I knew the carrot would take longer to cook them than the zucchini and I thought this might even out the cooking times. It worked out well :)

For the rest of the vegetables I sliced and diced everything rather fine just to keep it all nice and compact without to many really large and chunky pieces. My mom has a huge patch of parsley growing in her greenhouse so I picked myself a really big bouquet of it to use. I'm guessing that by the time I was done chopping it up it was close to half a cup but you could definitely use less if you don't have that much fresh on hand.

Did you know that fresh parsley keeps really well in a vase of water? It does! I like to keep a big bouquet of it on the kitchen windowsill and just cut off chunks as I need it. Just keep topping up the water supply each day and it can last there for a good couple of weeks :)

So with all of your vegetables ready, in a large bowl mix in the garlic, egg, chili sauce, flour, a couple good grinds of your sea salt and pepper...

and finally mix in your parmigiano reggiano. I love this cheese! Its salty taste and firm texture are perfect for this recipe as it doesn't melt down into a sloppy gooey mess when it heats up like some of the softer cheeses. Feta would also be a good substitution if you don't have any of the parmigiano reggiano.

Now that all of your ingredients are mixed together you will notice that it starts to weep a bit and some of the juices from the zucchini and peppers come out. Don't worry! Let the whole mixture rest for about 20 minutes and the liquid will settle to the bottom of the bowl. You can use the waiting time to clean up some of the dishes and heat up a large stainless steel frying pan over medium heat with enough olive oil or butter to thoroughly grease the pan but not to much that your fritters end up swimming in it :)

Once your pan is nice and hot drop heaping tablespoons of your fritter mix in and flatten them down slightly. I like to use two tablespoons to do this. One to scoop and the other to push it off the first spoon and into the frying pan. Keeps my hands clean *grin*.

Everything will start to sizzle and cook and you don't want to turn them until they have gone a nice golden brown. They will be to soft to turn easily if you don't wait for them to brown and firm up on the bottom half. Flip and continue to cook until golden on both sides and they are delicious served hot with a little bit of a yogurt dill dip :)

We all loved these and what a fantastic way to get more vegetables into your diet. A plus if your kids love them as much as mine did. You can hide any vegetables you want in these if you chop them fine enough! LOL.

Enjoy :)
Rosina

PS. Looking for more yummy recipes?? Check out this week's Hearth and Soul blog hop and La Bella Vita's weekend recipe round up