Vegetable Fritters

This was a phenomenal lunch. Really. So much so, in fact, that it's roused me from my near-holiday stupor for long enough to post about it. I know, I've been Missing In Action lately. I have one week of German class left before our Christmas holidays, which consequently means that I have absolutely no interest whatsoever. It's a bit hard to deal with at times, but rest assured, I've been indulging in plenty of comfort eating. ;)

Here's the healthy part of the meal. The tomatoes are clearly grown in a greenhouse at this time of year, which means that they're not overly flavourful, but they're still a refreshing bite in a salad. However, I think I'm going to have to give up on them entirely, and switch to canned or passata for recipes from now on. Oh, and for the record, I'm not usually one to add tinned corn to a salad; that's a very, um, 'European' thing to do. Frozen corn kernels don't appear to be known to freezer sections around here, so I have to use up leftover corn immediately. Here, I used a cup in the fritters, so the rest went into my salad. This place is breaking down my resistance...

I like my batter for fritters to be pretty highly spiced. I used about a teaspoon of dried chilli, a teaspoon of thyme, as much pepper as I could be bothered grinding into it, and a little salt. I don't always bother adding salt to my fritters, because the first thing I do after removing them from the pan is to give them a liberal sprinkling of salt. So you're more than welcome to omit it. I'm not that concerned about salt.

This mixture needs to be thick enough to hold the fritters together without running off, but not so thick that you could bake it like a cake. It's a very forgiving mixture, so you can always add more flour if you make it too liquid. This is another point at which I lament the lack of self-raising flour in this country... baking powder just doesn't act as evenly. Still, these are impossible to stuff up, I promise.

Once the shredded vegetables and corn are mixed into the batter, it's time to fry. How large your fritters are depends entirely on your personal preference. I like my fritters quite large, so that I can spend less time cooking and more time eating; these are my reliable option for when I want something hot and filling in less than 10 minutes time.

As you can see, this fritter is pretty large. It's always fun to make a lot of small fritters, too; you can keep them warm in a hot oven, but they'll lose their crunch, so I prefer to make them and eat them all at once. I'm also not averse to a fritter that covers my entire plate; the way I see it is that they're time-economical. Which is definitely what I need these days; I have so much to do right now that I feel panicked just thinking about it. I'm going to have to write this post faster...!

Vegetable Fritters

1 cup plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup corn kernels
1/2 zucchini, grated
1/2 large carrot, grated
soymilk (I think I used about 1 & 1/2 cups? I don't measure)
1 tsp chilli or cayenne
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp black pepper
salt

In a bowl, mix flour, spices and soymilk to make a batter. Add grated vegetables and corn, and mix thoroughly.
Fry fritters in oil until crispy.
Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper, and serve hot.
These go nicely with a salad to create a full meal, especially using pumpkinseed oil as a dressing, and I recommend lightly pickled vegetables too; I had beets and a couple of crunchy pickles to accompany. At home in Australia I always ate these with chunks of avocado and chilli sauce, but I've also decided that I'm not averse to BBQ sauce as an accompaniment, either.

Beet and Vegetable Soup

Apologies for the lack of Vegan Mofo post yesterday; I've had an Australian visitor for a few days, so I was in Koln yesterday. I'm exhausted; this is a short post, because the faster I write, the faster I can crawl into bed.

I only wish tomatoes like that were still available. They're a little lighter in colour, a little smaller than the tomatoes of mid-Summer, but compared to the tomatoes of today, they're a dream. Of course, the weather is only getting colder. I'm not terribly appreciative of that fact, as I'm sure you're aware, but I can only grin and bear it.

What that means is that I'm completely addicted to making soup. I love sauteeing some veg and simmering it long and slow, until my cold kitchen windows fog over and make the room into a steamy and tropical environment. Then I sit down at my table to mop up a huge bowl of rich and warm soup, using a hunk of crusty bread to clean the bowl.

This one is pretty easy to make, and is a great way to use whichever leftover vegetables you have sitting in your fridge. All that you really need is a beet or two and some tomatoes, plus a few other vegetables to balance it out. I usually add celery and carrots, and sometimes a potato or two to make it extra-filling. This batch had some leftover brussels sprouts, to add to the mix, and some red onion. A hint: add heaps of garlic. You'll thank yourself for it when you ward off colds in colder weather...!

So, soup aside for the moment, it's the 18th day of Vegan Mofo. It's been fun, but it really does tie me to my laptop, because I like to read my blog roll daily; it's somewhat unmanageable if I don't. I'll have a lot of catching up to do tomorrow evening, when my visiting Australian has gone off to Berlin... but most important will be catching up on my sleep. I think sometimes visitors forget that I still have to get up at 6:30am, even when they sleep in until 10. So, let's see if my tired and fried brain can remember what I put into this pot of sweet, earthy deliciousness...

Beetroot and Vegetable Soup

2 medium-sized beets, peeled and chopped (I used red)
6 tomatoes, chopped (or a can of tinned tomatoes)

2 Tbsp tomato paste

1 onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, sliced

2 large celery stalks, sliced

300g brussels sprouts, quartered

1/2 delicata squash or two carrots, sliced
2 bay leaves

1 Tbsp fresh thyme leaves

salt and pepper

olive oil

Sautee the onion and garlic in olive oil until fragrant and turning transparent.
Add the celery, beets, sprouts and squash, and sautee for a few minutes longer, to bring out the flavour.
Add tomatoes, bay leaves, thyme and tomato paste. Add enough water to generously cover the vegetables and simmer slowly for as long as you can leave it. 40 minutes minimum for the beets to become tender, but honestly, make this at lunchtime so that you can eat it at dinner. You'll thank yourself for it!

Season to taste with salt and pepper, and eat with a generous amount of bread - I recommend ciabatta. ;)

Better Beet Burgers

I not-so-secretly love it when my kitchen looks like the scene of a massacre. Beets are just so incredible. They have fantastic colours, a sweet and earthy flavour, and they're so quick and easy to prepare. (I'm looking at you, Artichoke. You know what I'm thinking.) So, having two beets in the fridge, I decided to make beet burgers again. Properly this time, because I wasn't trying to disguise a tin of hummous. ;)

So, here's the proper recipe for the beet and carrot burgers that I like so much! These fry up more easily than the previous batch, and cook faster too. Crispy on the outside, earthy on the inside, and fantastic with a smear of barbecue sauce and some fresh salad greens. I grated the beets and carrots the night before, simply because I was rearranging the contents of my fridge, and it helped the beets to dry out a touch, which was perfect for this recipe. If you don't have time, don't stress - you just might need a little more flour.


Better Beet Burgers

2 med-lge beets, peeled and grated
3 medium carrots, grated
1/3 cup wholemeal flour
1/4 cup chopped parsley
2 tbsp ground flaxseed mixed with a little hot water , or 2-eggs of egg replacer
salt & pepper
olive oil

Mix carrots, beets, parsley and flour in a bowl, so that the flour is evenly distributed amongst the mix. It'll stick to the shreds of vegetable, which is good - you don't want pockets of flour amongst your burgers.
Add your egg or flax mix and incoroprate thoroughly - it might look like there's not enough, but the burgers become damp as the moisture from the veg permeates the flour, so don't stress. As long as it just sticks together when you make a patty, you'll be fine.
Make four large patties from the mixture - mine were about 2cm thick. Fry them in a little olive oil until crisp, maybe 2-3 minutes per side. Don't prod them or flip them more than once! You don't want them to crumble or fall apart, and flipping them multiple times just means they'll take on more oil. Don't destroy the delicious crispness that you've worked so hard (ahem) to create.
Serve hot, straight from the pan, on a bread roll or with salad. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Delicious!

Can't beet a beat.

Ok, so you probably can beat them, quite easily... defenseless vegetable that they are. Terrible humour aside, I think beets are great. Aside from being the easiest-to-grow vegetable I've had the fun of raising (let's not think about all the 40-degree days that decimated the rest of my garden that summer) they're also very easy to prepare. Plus they only cost Euro 1.50 for a bunch at the Dom Markt, which means we're all winners.

For the world's easiest beets, just trim off the greens so that you've still got three centimetres or so of stalk above the bulb - you don't want to give you beet a chance to bleed out all that fabulous colour. Give the beets a good scrub in some water, and place them in an oven-proof dish. Cover them with a lid, or foil if you don't have one for the dish you've chosen. Alternately, you can individually wrap them in foil, but I feel like that's an awful lot of waste for the same results.

Bake them until they're completely tender, so that a knife pierces easily to the middle of the beet -about 25 minutes for small beets, 30-35 for medium beets, or 45 minutes for large ones. I tend to choose bunches with small or medium beets, partly because I have a penchant for anything in miniature, but also because large beets can be a touch woody sometimes. If you're so inclined, the greens that you've removed make a fantastic side-dish (frittata!) or stir-fry - just make sure they're well-washed, because the greens do tend to hold grit.

Wait until the beets are cool enough to handle, and slip off the skins. They'll come off incredibly easily, stems and all, and will leave you with fantastically magenta fingers for a few hours if you don't have plastic gloves to wear. I'm not averse to coloured fingers, so it doesn't phase me in the slightest. :)

Store in a sealed container in the fridge. So little work for so much flavour!

Roasted Vegetable Medley

I quite like the word "medley". Certainly I don't like it when it applies to music, and in particulary Christmas Carols, which I absolutely despise. But when it comes to food, medley stands for something I firly believe in: a little bit of everything. I don't eat every food on the planet, but when I have a full plate, I don't want every mouthful to taste the same. I was colours, flavours and textures to vary. I want vibrant food, and I don't want to get bored half way through my dinner. So, really, I love a good medley.

Roasted vegetables are something I grew up on. My mother made fantastic roasted veg - although, when I was young, she had a slight reputation for burning the carrots. She eventually came to the logic that if she added them later to her especially chunky mix, they cooked to perfection and were completely devoured by her vegetable-loving child. I can't remember if my siblings ate them, but either way, my mother was the master of the oven. We were also partial to the sunday pork roast at my grandparents' house, but I think that had more to do with the crackling than the vegetables. In fact, I only remember that the beans were overcooked. I guess some things, like fighting for the crispiest crackling, or crimes against innocent green beans, stay longer in my memory than how well my nanna cooked her roast veg.

Roasted vegetables are incredibly easy to make. I use a minimum of oil, because while I adore olive oil, I don't think my waistline enjoys it quite so much. For an entire tray of vegetables, I used perhaps a dessertspoon. I gave it all a good mix with my hands, to ensure that everything was properly coated, and a sprinkling of salt. Pepper I don't add until later, because I don't want to risk it burning. Hard herbs, like fresh rosemary or thyme, can get added at the half-way point.

There's no recipe to really give for something as simple as this. Just take the root vegetables of your choice (though I enjoy adding squash, such as crookneck or butternut, to the mix) and coat them in just enough oil. Roast them in a hot ove (mine was at about 240 degrees, but my oven is incredibly unreliable, so take that temperature with a pinch of salt!) for half an hour, turn them over, add your herbs (or not) and roast for another half an hour. Too easy.

Served with sauteed cabbage and green beans (which were most definitely still tender-crisp, thankyou!) it makes a fantastic meal. So fantastic, in fact, that this is what I ate for breakfast this morning. Why would I bother making a bowl of oats, when I could simply plunder the leftovers in my fridge?

Beet Drop Burgers

I have an updated, simpler recipe here, where I'm not trying to use up certain tasteless tinned ingredients... ;)

I have a confession to make: I don't like dry burgers. Now, when I phrase it like that, I'm sure that everyone agrees. But the truth of it is, that my burger of choice is one full of vegetables, and that I want it to be extra juicy. I want a burger that has some texture, that’s still crispy-fried on the outside, but that isn’t all loamy inside like commercial vegie patties tend to be. So what do I do? Make a burger out of vegetables that make good juices. Am I crazy? Most definitely. But did I make some delicious burgers? You bet.

Yep, I know you’re probably recoiling at the colour. The truth is that I love colourful food, and honestly, a couple of beets aren’t going to scare me away. I think beets are great – in moderation. By themselves, I can’t eat all that much. They can be overly sweet, and they’re best mixed with something refreshing, like cucumber or fresh greens. They’re also great roasted with sweet potato, pumpkin, or whatever other vegies you like in your traditional roast, provided you don’t mind a little of the colour spreading to the other veg. Hey, I like a decorative meal…!


You’re going to have to excuse the over-exposed photos. My camera loved the colour as much as I did, so I chose not to change the colour settings. Sometimes the idea of eating a fluorescent meal is just too good to tamper with.

Both the carrots and the beets in this recipe came in bunches from the last Dom Markt – that was on Saturday. I believe that per bunch, the beets were €1.80 and the carrots €1.20. Both veg are long-lasting, but if you’re like me and love beet greens, then you’ll want to eat those within a couple of days. Carrot greens can be used in place of parsley, but they tend to get overpowering very quickly, so use them sparingly. Or, if you prefer, you can always compost them. We don’t have compost, and I’m a student, so it’s easiest just to eat what I can! The herbs I used were less than a Euro per bunch, but I only used half a cup, so really there’s just more left for pizza and tabbouli. Win!


Oh, and in the case of frying these burgers, thinner is better. Honestly, the crispier you get the outside, the greater they are to bite into. If you’re one of those people who likes thicker burgers, add another ¾ cup flour and a teaspoon of baking powder, to give them a little rise. If you want lighter burgers, omit the chickpeas. I used a tin of hommus because it needed to be used – I discovered that hommus simply shouldn’t come from a can. Enough said.

These burgers are probably technically fritters, because they’re dropped into a hot pan and spread to the desired size – except that I tend to make my fritters using more flour. The idea is that these are moist, but still firm enough to hold together when you fry them. I recommend, against the advice of any health professional, to allow them to get pretty dark when you fry them – it’s the toasty, crispy bits that really make the flavour. They’d probably be great with a touch of garlic or ginger in the mixture, but I was a little too hungry to bother.

Check out that colour! :)

Beet Drop Burgers

2 Medium Beets
2 Medium Carrots
1 380g can Hommus (or 1 can Chickpeas, blended)*
½ cup Fresh Herbs, chopped (I used parsley and basil)
1 tsp dried Thyme
½ tsp ground Chilli or Cayenne
2 eggs-worth of egg replacer (I used ground flax with hot water)
¾ cup all-purpose Flour or Breadcrumbs
Salt and Pepper to taste

Peel and grate the carrots and beets.
Thoroughly mix all ingredients in a bowl. You don’t want your mix to be too liquid, but this depends on how juicy your veg and your chickpeas are. You want your mixture to become quite sticky and hold its shape when you stir it, but you don’t want it to be so thick that you can’t shape it once it’s in the pan. Add more flour or breadcrumbs if you need.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Drop about 1/3 cup mixture into a preheated, oiled pan. Spread it out to form a layer about 1cm thick, and allow to cook until brown, then flip to allow the other side to cook. If they fall apart when you flip them, then you need to allow them to cook for a little longer.
Once they’re cooked, do as you do for all freshly-fried items: sprinkle them with a little salt. Serve with salad, or in a burger roll with avocado and a slathering of dijonnaise.

Makes 10-12 burgers… which might seem like a lot, but you can’t stop at just one. Or, if you’re me, you can’t stop at two… or more…

*You can omit the chickpeas entirely if you want a lighter burger. Like I said, I was just trying to hide the hommus in another food, because I can't bear the thought of throwing something out...