Peas Please...

Pea, Za'atar and Feta Fritters

There’s something comforting about a fritter, probably because it’s fried, and that nearly always leads to good things. (It also reminds me of Matt Smith’s Doctor talking to Amy Pond and saying “You’re Scottish, go fry something…)

This is from Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Simple. Thank you to Melinda for turning me onto this because I’d always looked at his recipes in The Guardian and been put off by the sheer number of ingredients, especially ones I didn’t have. ‘Simple’ is definitely an easier way to access his recipes.

I should also say as a disclaimer than I am not a veg eater. Never have been from when I was little, and here I am 55 years later still not being a veg eater. Sure I eat salad fine, and I like some raw veg – peas, carrots etc, but god forbid don’t point me at a piece of broccoli or a brussel sprout. (I quite happily cook them as my husband adores veg, but don’t ask me to eat them.) Having said that, last night’s dinner was Pea, Za atar, and Feta Fritters and damn good they were as well.

Because I was bored, here’s a pic of the leaning tower of pea fritter ingredients. I’m trying to decide if the pea plate is actually one of those revolving restaurants in disguise, or possibly the main body of the USS Enterprise.

Here’s the recipe book quantities, and I did roughly a third of these (as in only one egg), since there are only two of us.

·          500g frozen peas, defrosted (that’s a lot of peas!)
·         120g ricotta
·         3 large eggs
·         1 lemon, zested, and the rest used for serving
·         3 tbs za’atar
·         100 all-purpose flour
·         1 ½ tsp baking powder
·         1 cup of mint leaves (I used dried and it worked fine)
·         200g feta crumbled into smallish pieces
·         800 ml sunflower oil for frying (that’s a lot of oil – I didn’t use nearly this much, and just shallow fried)

Stick the peas in the processor (I only have a small choppy machine thing, rather than a big processor and it worked fine). Pulse a few times until the peas are roughly crushed and decant into a biggish bowl.

Add the ricotta, egg, lemon zest, salt and pepper to taste. Mix well, then add the za’atar, flour and baking powder and mix until just combined. Fold in the feta and mint carefully so the feta stays chunkyish.

I forgot to take a photo of the guddle of ingredients in the bowl – mainly because my G&T was calling my attention. However, here’s a photo of the fritters before they were cooked. They are kind of proto-fritters at this point.

Heat up your oil, then in theory use two spoons to create quenelles and fry three or four at a time for three/four minutes, turning one. The timing will be more or less depending on how big your quenelles are.

As you can see my fritters don’t look so much like quenelles as random shapes done by a five year old, but what the hell…

Take them out onto kitchen paper and repeat with the rest until you are done. Serve with lemon.

Even though I did between half to a third of the quantity of the ingredients, as you can see it still made substantial amount. We finished up having two fritters each as part of dinner.

I’m going to use the remaining three as part of a stir fry tomorrow along with a random small cooked piece of pork tomorrow. Hopefully with rice and some sesame oil and soy, it should make something interesting. We shall see!