Thirty boulettes ready for the fryer. I made these great little vegetarian morsels once before. We liked them a lot and decided to do them again. The zucchini plants are producing like gangbusters and I'm trying to pick the squash before it gets too big.
A close-up before cooking. This recipe is pretty easy. You have to grate the zukes (I use the food processor) and squeeze the juice out of them. The juice gets saved to go into the sauce, which is a spicy curry-like dip. But I think you could use any sauce, from ketchup to whatever you like.
And here they are cooked! The balls are made with the grated squash, grated onion, minced ginger, minced chili pepper, and some corn meal to bind it all together. I added some cayenne and some smoked paprika. Then they get fried; we use our deep fryer, but I'd bet that doing them in a frying pan with about a half inch of oil (turning frequently) would work just fine.
A close-up of the cooked boulettes. They're so good that I'm freezing bags of grated zucchini so I can make them again a few times over the winter.
These are a lot like curried hushpuppies, but with more vegetable content than cornmeal. We found the recipe in Madhur Jaffrey's book called World of the East: Vegetarian Cooking. We substituted cornmeal for the chickpea flour Jaffrey uses, because that's what we had.
ReplyDeleteThe sauce is a curry-spiced mixture of onions, tomatoes, and cream that we puree with the stick blender.
don't u need an egg to hold it togethr?
ReplyDeleteThey look deelish and I love Indian spices!
ReplyDeleteBettyAnn
Do you think one could bake them rather than fry them? They do look deelish.
ReplyDeletemelinda, no egg necessary!
ReplyDeletebettyann, they are so tasty!
cheryl, I'm not sure about baking, but maybe I'll try it...
Cheryl - I think you could bake them. You can bake falafel quite successfully, and they are chickpea flour, so I should think these will work too.
ReplyDeleteWalt - you could try making them with lentil flour for a more local version too.
Susan, where do you get lentil or chickpea flour in the Touraine?
ReplyDeleteLentil flour is easy for us, because we are on the border of Berry, where the local variety has Label Rouge certification. I saw it the other day in the Maison de Pays at La Gabrière in the Brenne. Chick pea flour you can get in the bio section of most supermarkets. I saw some recently when we had my brother-in-law staying - he is coeliac, so we were looking out for stuff that he could eat.
ReplyDeletesusan, thanks! I'll look for chick pea flour in the bio section the next time I'm in the store.
ReplyDeletedon't mind me while I raid your blog with comments :)
ReplyDeletethese zucchini balls (yes, I snickered too) look delicious. I hate dealing with masses of hot oil, so I'd definitely go for the skillet and hopefully sooner than later because the idea of zucchini, ginger, cornmeal, chili, and onion makes me very hungry!