Carrot and Onion Fritters… or 'how I became a bee.'

So we’ve been decorating the cottage… we’ve been meaning to do it for a while but now that we have 2 friends coming up next weekend and my mum and the family coming up the weekend after to celebrate her birthday, we thought a little cottage tart up was in order…

… and it’s those annoying fiddly bits that we’ve got to do like painting the skirting boards and the bathroom floor… anyway it’s a very hot day here today so the paint is drying super-fast!

I though something easy but fun and tasty was in order and I was inspired by watching Nigel Slater on TV last night to make these little beauties.  What I love about the way he cooks is his laid back style and his ‘just chuck in what you’ve got in the fridge’ attitude, which is exactly the way I like to cook… without a recipe book or the constraints that come with them… sometimes it’s a disaster… no wait a minute!  my cooking is never a disaster, just ‘genius in the making.’

The other thing that happened today was that I became a bee.

My courgettes have been so incredibly showy every morning with their huge yellow flowers but that’s pretty much it… like impotent pimps, they display their wares then shrivel and die… I lost my 4th potential courgette from this pot and I just couldn’t understand why.  Well thank the lord for YouTube… it turns out that this is a very common problem… there’s no one doing the cross pollination on the plant.

click here to check out this film (go on it’s only short and totally fascinating.)

the long and short of it was that I had to remove the male flowers from the plant, peel back its frilly shirt (ooh er!) and rub its bits on the female flowers bits… it was pure vegetable porn!

and hopefully I’ll end up with some decent courgettes next week.

Recipe
3 medium carrots finely grated
2 medium onions finely grated or sliced
coriander
2 tablespoons flour
2 eggs beaten
salt and pepper
olive oil
roughly 2 tablespoons grated cheese

You simply put it all in a bowl and squidge it round till it’s thoroughly mixed and feels as though it wont fall apart in the pan… you can add other herbs or less/more flour and the cheese can be anything you have that can be grated.

then form them into patties and shallow fry.  Nigel says the trick to good patties that wont fall apart is to let them cook till very golden on one side, then turn and do the same with the other… don’t keep turning them… you get more flavour this way and a better consistency.

I served them with a simple salad but they’d make an excellent burger with a slice of halloumi… or served with a sweet relish.  I had planned to make a rosemary aioli but didn’t have all the ingredients… but I botched this together using rose wine instead of white wine vinegar… and… it didn’t taste bad… bit too much mustard powder, which again is all I had, but it went with the fritters perfectly.

eat and of course, enjoy!