Description
These herby courgette fritters are golden, crisp, and juicy, bursting with hints of mint and wild garlic. Add some burnt chilli yoghurt for dipping or drizzling, and you have the perfect combination of exotic smokiness and smooth creaminess!
Ingredients
Units
Fritters
- 3 Medium courgettes, trimmed and coarsely grated (500g)
- 2 Garlic cloves, grated
- Finely grated zest of 2 lemons
- 100g Self-raising flour
- 50g Polenta
- 160ml Soda water
Herbs Required
- 40g Wild garlic leaves (approx 12 leaves)* or 5g of fresh chives
- 1 1/2 Tbsp/6g chopped fresh mint
Sauce
- 1–2 large medium heat red chillies (Serrano or similar)
- 1/2 cup (180g) thick Greek or Skyr yogurt
- Also: Oil for frying
Instructions
- Grate your courgettes using a box grater on the coarse side.
- Toss the courgettes into a bowl with a generous pinch of salt. Tip the courgettes into a colander lined with a clean kitchen town, and place the colander over the bowl, allowing the liquid to drip through. Set aside.
- Place a chilli directly over the flame of a stove and cook, turning as needed until the skin blackens. Once cooked, place it into an airtight container and leave to sweat for 5 minutes. This encourages the skin to easily peel off. Scrape off the black skin and finely chop the chili before setting aside.
- Remove the stems from the wild garlic and the mint. Discard the mint stems and set aside the garlic stems. Finely chop the leaves of the mint and the wild garlic together. Separately, finely slice the stems of the wild garlic.
- Once the courgettes have sat for a few minutes, vigorously squeeze them in the tea towel to remove all the excess water from the grated courgette. Discard the courgette liquid and return the courgette to the bowl along with half of the chopped mint and wild garlic, the wild garlic stems, the flour, polenta, grated garlic, lemon zest and soda water. Mix until the batter comes together, then taste and season with salt and pepper.
- For the sauce, combine the yogurt, chopped chilli and the other half of the mint and wild garlic together. Squeeze in half the juice of a lemon and season the sauce to taste.
- To cook the fritters, place a high sided saucepan over a medium-high heat. Add enough oil to cover the fritters (about 8-10cm deep). Heat the oil to 170C/338F. Once the oil is hot, drop in teaspoon sized blobs of batter, then cook the fritters until golden brown. If they brown too quickly, your oil is too hot – turn it down slightly.Alternatively:
Place a frying pan over a medium high heat, add a drizzle of oil to coat the base well. Drop teaspoon sized blobs of batter into the frying pan, flatten slightly with a spatula. Cook the fritters on each side, until golden brown. - Once the fritters are cooked, remove them from the oil with a slotted spoon, and place on newspaper or kitchen paper to drain. Season with salt as they come out of the oil.
- Serve immediately with your burnt chilli yoghurt as an accompaniment.
Notes
Wild garlic is available in the spring and can be substituted with spring onion, half a bag of chopped chives – or Ramps if you’re in the US.
Fritters can be cooled and reheated in your air fryer or oven at 200C/ 400F until crispy if you are cooking for a crowd and want to prepare ahead.
- Prep Time: 15 min
- Cook Time: 15 min
- Category: Snacks
- Method: Fry
Nutrition
- Calories: 408.6kcal
- Sugar: 10.53g
- Sodium: 661.33mg
- Fat: 6.28g
- Saturated Fat: 2.51g
- Unsaturated Fat: 3.2g
- Trans Fat: 0g
- Carbohydrates: 70.74g
- Fiber: 5.85g
- Protein: 18.24g
- Cholesterol: 11.7mg
