Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Zucchini fritters


I think we're gonna need a bigger frying pan.

The zucchini plants have taken over the garden. I cannot possibly keep up. Already, just three plants have produced dozens of zukes. And many more are on the way. If you are local, and enjoy the green things, you would be doing me a tremendous kindness by raiding my plot of earth and taking some of the things off my hands.


What, you thought I was kidding?

Anyhow, here's something to ponder as you're making your way to the garden. They're zucchini fritters that I've made a bunch of times, and usually they turn out pretty well.


You start by shredding some zukes with your instrument of choice.


Then toss the stuff into a colander and lightly salt it. There are four cups of shredded zucchini here, and I always use Kosher salt.


Put a plate on top of the zucchini and weight it down for a couple of hours. The idea here is to drain out most of the water that's in the zukes.


I don't just let the weighted plate do all the work. Several times while I'm waiting I will toss the zucchini by hand and then manually press down on the plate to remove as much moisture as possible.


To dry it out even further I go a couple rounds with paper towels.


After which, the four cups of zucchini winds up being around two-thirds of a cup, or less. (The liquid you see is about two cups, and it's not even all of what leeched out of the zukes.)


In a bowl you put the zucchini, an egg, a good dose of grated cheese (Pecorino here), maybe a tablespoon each of flour and breadcrumbs, and salt and pepper.


Mix it all up and you're ready to go.


It's important that the oil (olive oil here) is very hot before dropping the fritters into the pan. These were only put in about thirty seconds ago and you can see that they're ready to be turned.


This batch turned out pretty good, but fritters are the kind of thing that can go either way. My advice is to be patient, and practice.

We've got plenty of zukes to go around. Remember?

8 comments:

Fred said...

Player: You be the "Zuke of (olive) Oil"!

Mister Meatball said...

Yeah, maybe I need rewrite for the hed!

Claudia said...

After two weeks, I looked in my garden. Oh my. Can that many zucchini grow in two weeks? Fritters,e here I come. Although I am not known for my patience...

Mister Meatball said...

Two weeks?

Must be a jungle of zucca!!! The things grow several inches a day, seems like.

Get moving!

MaryMoh said...

These are always my favourite. So good dipped in chili sauce...mmm

jerseypaulie said...

These look great and I will make them this weekend. Another favorite is french fried zuchini. A restaurant in Bay Ridge Brooklyn, Colandreas New Corners, makes the best, and 90% of the patrons order a side of them. So light, so tasty, with squeezed lemon they are heaven.

Baking Diary said...

I want some! The fritters not the zuke, hate to do the grating:D Someone else getting the job done is so much nicer!

Lorraine said...

My mother used to make so many things with the Zucchini's that grew in the garden. Fritters were definitely made and she also stuffed the flowers! I've posted them on my blog. Check it out. you may want to use the flowers too!
http://thefoodcrawl.blogspot.com/2011/08/stuffed-zucchini-flowers.html