Spiced Vegetable Fritters

When I first began visiting blogs about three years ago, Kathryn Elliot from Limes and Lycopene was a regular site I loved to check out. Kathryn is a nutrionist with her own clinic in Sydney and she always posted interesting and useful facts about healthy eating and nutrition together with wholesome but delicious recipes.

I was delighted to pop over last week to find she had a little surprise. Both she and Lucy from Nourish Me had come together to create this lovely e-magazine (first time I had heard of that). Pouring over the pages, this recipe caught my eye so I thought I would give it a go. It's rather timely actually as I find I need to lose a couple of kilo's and that's where Kathryn's food and advise always comes in handy. I tweaked a few ingredients and also some of the method; so my fritters although close, are not exactly the same as the fritters in An Honest Kitchen. Hope you don't mind Kathryn.

Spiced Vegetable Fritters
adapted from An Honest Kitchen

300gm (combined weight) cauliflower and broccoli
1/2 onion, roughly chopped
1 x 400gm can lima or butter beans
1 egg, whisked
3 tablespoons plain flour
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
2 tablespoons rolled oats
1/2 bunch fresh continental parsley, finely chopped
light olive oil for cooking

Roughly chop the cauliflower and broccoli.



Place the cauliflower, broccoli, beans and onions in a food processor.



Process till all the ingredients are finely chopped and clump together.



The recipe says to transfer this to another bowl and add the rest of the ingredients, except the oil. Mix well together and it may be necessary to mash the mixture slightly with the back of a spoon to get the right texture. Season with salt and pepper. Form the mixture into 12 fritters and it may be easier to mould the mixture with wet hands.

That is what you are supposed to do. But this is what I did instead. And discovered I had gotten myself into a slight bit of bother. Umm, maybe the author knew what she was talking about after all.

Instead of transferring to a bowl; I kept going with the processor. Next I added the egg.



Then I added the cumin, ground coriander, cracked pepper and paprika (in place of cayenne pepper).



Next I added fresh parsley (in place of fresh coriander), the oats and the flour. The recipe stated using 1 1/2 tablespoons of flour but my mixture was looking rather wet and I added the same again.



Hmmm. I felt my mixture was still too wet but I didn't want to add any more flour. Perhaps that is why I should have paid attention to the recipe and not continued on with processing. I think processing definitely created a wetter mixture.



I really didn't want to mould the fritters with my hands so I had to become creative. I remembered this round metal ring I had been wanting to use, so I searched in my overloaded gadget draw until I found it. It has a nifty little holder attached so I thought I would give that a go.

I took out a tray, lined it with glad bake and sprinkled it generously with dried breadcrumbs. I felt this was the best way to help with the fritters not sticking. I placed the well floured ring onto the tray and began filling it with the mixture to create my fritters. Perhaps I should change the name to burgers, because that is what they were resembling.



This is fun. I was really enjoyed making the 'fritters' and seeing how they would go.



I made exactly six and they fit perfectly onto my tray. I was very pleased. I placed them in the fridge for half an hour to help them firm up a little.



The recipe says to place fritters in a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat; add a drizzle of canola oil and when hot cook fritters in batches. Cook for about three or four minutes on each side till browned and cooked through. I didn't have any canola oil so I used light olive oil instead. As my fritters were twice the recommended size I cooked them for about five minutes on each side and I even covered the frypan with a lid during some of the cooking to ensure they cooked all the way through.



Yep. They turned out. And they were delicious. I ate mine with some plain yoghurt drizzled with a little sweet chilli sauce, baby spinach leaves and a wedge of lime.



I really would have liked to have had some of my homemade sweet red pepper relish. Then half way through eating I remembered I had some roasted red peppers in the fridge. I quickly zapped them in the microwave to bring them to room temperature then draped them over what was left of my fritter. The perfect touch.



I froze the remaining uncooked fritters. They will certainly come in handy when time is short and I need some good nutritious, healthy, tasty, "honest" food.