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

Chickpea Cannelloni ~ Recipe

When daddy is away the rest of us go vegetarian *grin*.

Hubby is completely meat crazy and wants it pretty much for breakfast, lunch and dinner and by the time he leaves to go back to work the kids and I are totally ready for a meat moratorium :)

We love chickpeas so I thought it would be fun to make cannelloni with a vegetable and chickpea filling and for a first try I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

I started with:

2 large carrots
1 stalk of celery
5 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 a sweet onion (approx. 1/2 cup)

I grated the celery and carrot and then pureed all of it in my blender until it was completely smooth.

Next I added:

1 egg
1 cup of ricotta cheese
1 cup cooked spinach
2 cups of chickpeas
2 big bunches of fresh basil & parsley (approx. 3/4 cup each)
Salt and pepper to taste

Add all of the above ingredients into your blender or food processor and blend until smooth. I like to puree it like this so that the kids don't know exactly what vegetables I've put in because each of them has specific likes and dislikes and if they see something they don't like they want to pick it out. This way it just tastes good *grin*. If you like more texture then you can definitely blend it less and personally if it was just for me I wouldn't blend in the spinach. It all depends on who your food critics are! LOL

Note: I used dried chickpeas. If you want to try making your own place your 1 1/4 cups of dried chickpeas in a large glass bowl with 4 cups of water and let sit overnight until morning. When you wake up transfer your beans and water to a cooking pot and make sure you have at least twice to three times as much water as your beans. Bring to a raging boil and boil uncovered on high for 10 minutes. After that reduce the heat and simmer for 1-2 hours until tender. I find it usually takes closer to the 2 hours for mine to be fully cooked. You can also do a double or triple batch of beans all at one time and through the rest of it in the freezer portioned out for future meals to save on some cooking time next time!

With your chickpeas and vegetables all mixed together add 1 cup of shredded Pecorino Romano cheese or another one of your favorite cheeses and 1/2 a cup of brown bread crumbs, stir together and you're ready to start filling your cannelloni noodles :)

Oven ready cannelloni noodles have to be the easiest type to work with because you can fill them in their rigid uncooked form but you have to have enough liquid in the pot when you cook them for them to soften properly.

So to create my tomato cooking sauce I used two tins of regular tomato sauce plus two tinfuls of water to double the volume and then added the following herbs to create an italian flavor :)

1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 tablespoon onion powder

In a large 10 x 13 greased baking dish pour in enough of your tomato sauce to thoroughly cover the base of the pan.

I have to tell you I came across the EASIEST way to fill your cannelloni noodle!! Put all of your filling into a large freezer bag, snip off one of the bottom corners and you have created the perfect piping bag for filling your noodles :)

If you place the tip of the bag right inside the noodle while you're filling it, the pressure as it gets nearer the top will actually push all of the filling down towards the bottom creating an even fill. Just keep the base of the noodle against the palm of your hand to prevent it from blowing out the bottom. Don't ask me how I know that *grin*.

Place each filled noodle into your tomato sauce leaving a little bit of space in between each for expansion...

and once all of your noodles are filled and in the pan, top with the remaining tomato sauce and a sprinkle more of cheese :)

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit and serve up with some garlic bread and salad :) So yummy and the kids had second helpings so I'm calling this a smashing good success! LOL

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more yummy recipes?? Check out this week's Hearth and Soul blog hop :)