Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Next stop, deep-fried Mars Bars

Fried food is the best -- not for your arteries, but certainly for the taste buds. Dinner tonight was Greek-inspired, including a big salad, pita breads, tzatziki, and these fried courgettes and chickpea fritters. Fried courgettes are really easy: Slice courgettes quite thinly, put in a bowl, pour over some milk, toss the courgettes, then toss the slices into another bowl containing a mix of fine cornmeal, salt/pepper, and dried herbs. Fry in hot oil until crispy on both sides. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle with rock salt.


The chickpea fritter recipe is from my Mediterranean Street Food cookbook, beloved provider of the excellent Moroccan flatbread recipe. It's also extremely simple (and vegan), although stirring the chickpea paste is exhausting work.

Put 2 cups of chickpea flour in a saucepan and slowly add 3 cups of cold water, beating well with a whisk to get a smooth mixture. Season, and then place over a medium heat and cook for about 10-15 minutes, stirring constantly. The paste gets really thick really quickly and your arm will start to ache after a couple of minutes, so see if you can rope someone else in to help out.

After 10 minutes, take the mixture off the heat, stir in some oregano and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil -- or some finely chopped parsley -- and quickly pour out onto an oiled plate (I covered mine with cling film first). Working quickly, spread the mixture out to about 1/2 inch thick and leave to set. It sets firm really quickly, so don't tip it out and then answer the phone or have a cup of tea. At this point, you can leave it in the fridge overnight and it's fine.

Cut the paste into shapes, or sticks, or cubes. Heat up some olive oil in a pan. (The recipe says enough for deep-frying, but I just had about 1/4 inch in the bottom of a large frying pan and that was fine.) You want it to be hot enough to sizzle when you put your first fritter in. Add the paste shapes and fry on both sides until they're crispy and golden-brown -- about 4 minutes in total if your oil is hot enough. Scoop out, drain on paper towels, and then sprinkle with salt. And don't forget to turn the heat off under the oil.

This quantity will make a lot of fritters; I managed to quarter it by mistake, but there were still plenty for two hungry beasts.

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