Acuka the Walnut Sauce

The first time I ate this sauce was  when I was studying at university. I was staying at a dormitory sharing the room with four people, all of whom were from a different city. I learnt several new foods special to their hometowns and their moms. Once a week, our moms would alternately send a package full of foods that we missed and couldn’t easily find there. We would look forward to getting the package on that day with a great excitement. Those packages would turn our dinners into great feasts for a few days. And it was then when all of us realized how talented our moms were at fitting so many things in a box.  We would get together and unpack the package together with a great excitement.

Acuka was in one of these packages sent by a roommate’s mom. It was in a glass jar and I thought that it was a kind of tomato or pepper paste. It was more than this. When I opened the jar and smelled, I was fascinated by the scent of the flavors. My friend said that they eat this sauce at breakfast by spreading it on bread slices or on toast. I  also love to place a cheese cube on it. We ate it not only at breakfast but also at nights when we got hungry while studying.  When you want to snack, acuka is a great solution for you. Also, this sauce might be served as an appetizer or savory food with Turkish raki. You can keep this sauce in jars for a long time, so when you have unexpected guests, you can spread acuka on bread slices and serve it with tea. I’m sure they will all love it  and ask for its recipe.

I’m so lucky to have homemade pepper and tomato paste and would like to thank to mom for this. She makes them every summer and brings some for us. As they are already salty, I don’t add any salt in this sauce. I’m planning to write about pepper paste soon as it has a very important role in Turkish cuisine.

Acuka
Ingredients
-    3 tbsp pepper paste
-    1 tbsp tomato paste
-    ½ cup olive oil
-    1 cup walnut, crumbled
-    4 cloves garlic, mashed
-    2 tsp cumin
-    1 tsp black pepper
-    A pinch of dried thyme

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Taste it after they are mixed and if you think any of these ingredients is not enough, add some more of it.
You can increase the amounts and keep it in glass jars.

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Beetroot Sauce

(drawing by mom)

Are you those kind of people who love to snack while watching a movie or while working on your PC? If you are, what kind of things do you eat or drink? We sometimes have dried fruits with Turkish tea or cheese and red wine or beer and pistachio, crackers or chips. And we love to try new sauces with chips and crackers and our favorite ingredients in these sauces is strained yogurt, which might be called greek yogurt abroad.

I have heard many times that beetroot is on top of healthy foods. It is said that beetroot protects our body from diabetes and tuberculosis, helps liver work regularly and overcomes anaemia. Some doctors even claim that beetroot juice can be a remedy for cancer. So I’ve decided to have it more often in my kitchen. I’ve been trying to discover some new dishes with beetroot. Some fast food restaurants here have a pink sauce that is taking my attention and I love to have it in sandwiches or on baked potatoes. I’ve learnt that they make it by mixing yogurt and beetroot.

I had been planning to make this sauce for some time until last Friday. We made this pink appetizing dip on Friday and have it with crackers while watching a movie called Soul Kitchen by a famous Turkish director, Fatih Akın. It is an amusing movie about an unlucky man trying to save his restaurant. We enjoyed it a lot and it was also great to have something to eat while watching as there were always people eating and drinking something in that restaurant.

Pancar Sos
Ingredients
-    2 beetroots
-    2 cloves garlic, mashed
-    Fresh dill, chopped
-    ½ cup strained yogurt
-    1 tbsp mayonnaise
-    Salt

Boil the beetroots without peeling. When they are soft enough, take them from fire, wash and peel. You can drink the remaing water in the pot. I squeeze some lemon in it and I loveto drink it when it gets cold enough.

Grate or puree the peeled beetroots.

Mix strained yogurt, mayonnaise, salt and mashed garlic until combined very well. Then add the beetroot and chopped fresh dill. Put it ina bowl and serve it with crackers or chips.

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Fluffy Pogaca

I can’t tell how I was surprised by these mini balls when I first tried the recipe. I had  tried several pogaca recipes before this one, but this one was the best ever. The ones I tried before were not as soft as this one. These are so fluffy and tempting that you can even get up in the middle of the night to have one.  It is always a great pleasure to see the very delighted face of people when they have the first bite. It is also a wonderful feeling to be sure that they will ask for the second or the third even for the forth.  One day, I put some of these to my lunch box and shared them with some colleagues. They ate the pogacas with big eyes, which means they can’t believe how these simple looking balls can be that yummy.  And the best thing about these pogacas is that they don’t get stale easily. You will see that they are still so soft even after a week, so I generally make these on Sunday as a preparation for weekdays. I never leave for work without having breakfast and I get up easier knowing that my breakfast is already ready on the table. A cup of milk always goes very well with these magical balls.

Pogaca is a traditional savory pastry in Turkey just like simit and acma. All pastry shops here have these three as their main products. And people stop by these shops on the way to their work early in the morning to buy some of these. Students can find these even at school canteens, so if they can’t have breakfast as soon as they wake up at home, they have simit, acma or pogaca at school with a cup of tea. There are a few versions of pogaca with different fillings like feta cheese, kasar cheese (yellow cheese), potato or mince. It is even possible to find it with no filling. They may be big or small in size in pastry shops, but I prefer making them small as they look more cute in this way.

Now you may be wondering how these pogacas get that soft. The secret is hidden in its dough mixture. This recipe, from a Turkish food magazine called Lezzet suggests using mineral water instead of regular water. It is not known by most people in Turkey that mineral water and soda water are not the same. Mineral water comes from a natural spring whereas soda water is produced in laboratories.  Soda water is carbonated, which makes it an artificial drink while mineral water naturally has carbon dioxide in it with lots of minerals. For more information about mineral water, you can visit here. As it is scientifically proven that mineral water is healthy, we can drink or use it in our kitchen without worrying.

Yumuşacık Poğaça
Ingredients
For its dough:
-    4 cups flour
-    ¼ cup warm milk
-    1 tbsp dry instant yeast
-    ½ cup vegetable oil
-    1 tbsp sugar
-    1 tsp salt
-    ¾ cup mineral water
For its filling:
-    Half bunch of parsley
-    1 ½ cup feta cheese
For coating their top:
-    1 egg yolk
-    Poppy seeds

Mix sugar and yeast with milk. Combine all the dough ingredients including this milk mixture and mix them well. You can add a little more flour or mineral water if either of them is not enough. You should have a pliable and nonsticky dough. Cover it with a moist cloth and let it rest for 45 min.

Chop the parsley and mix it with cheese.

Take a small piece from the dough and flatten it with your hands. You can do this on the counter. Put a tsp of cheese mixture on it and close it up folding the edges upwards like a bundle. Do the same for the rest of the dough. Place a parchment paper in a baking tray and place the pogacas on it. The folded side of pogacas should be at the bottom to have a ball shape.

Preheat the oven at 180C.

Beat the egg yolk well and coat all the pogacas with it using a brush. And sprinkle poppy seeds on each pogaca. Bake them about 30 minutes until they get golden.

I love them when they are still warm, so after taking them out from oven, I  throw a few of them into my mouth.

Note: These ingredients make about 40 pogacas as I make them so small that you can eat them in just two bites. You can make them bigger if you like or you can use the half of these ingredients if you want fewer.

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Pasta in Oven

As we are in Winter break here, I don’t need to go to school everyday.  I didn’t want to wake up early yesterday morning, in fact I didn’t want to get out of the bed eventhough I woke up. It was great to know that it was Monday but there was no work.  After lingering over breakfast, I decided to do some house chores and to change the planning of some rooms. I feel refreshed whenever I make some “restoration” inside the house by changing the places of the coach, armchairs, bookcases (we have 6 big bookcases), and the other portable things in the house. It’s like moving to a new house, so whenever I get bored, I do it at least once a year as I do love renewals. Of course I wasn’t alone while doing these, I could have never managed all these without the help of my hubby.

When I was having a cup of Turkish coffee to take a rest, I realized that the dinner time was coming. And guess what? I remembered that we had invited two friends for dinner. “What are we going to cook?” was the question I repeated a hundred times. And hubby offered his practical proposal: Pasta in Oven. Yep! It was a great idea because it was easy and scrumptious. I have never met anybody refusing pasta no matter how it is cooked. However, when cooked in oven, pasta becomes more special with its irresistible look. It looks like a kind of borek, doesn’t it?

Our friends were happy to see the new planning in our house and feel the wonderful smell of  pasta coming from the kitchen. It was ready when they came, but we needed some fresh salad to serve. We always love to work with our guests in the kitchen, so I didn’t refuse their proposal for help and  put the necessary ingredients for a salad on the counter. Hubby served us red wine as he knew how to motivate us to work. After a very short time, our dinner was ready with a great trio: Pasta in oven, green salad and red wine.

Fırında Makarna
Ingredients:
-    ½  package of pasta (I used bucatini, thick spaghetti)
-    1 cup feta cheese
-    3 eggs
-    2 ½ cup milk
-    3 tbsp olive oil
-    3 tbsp flour
-    1 cup chopped parsley
-    1 cup grated kasar cheese (yellow cheese), for its top
-    Salt
-    Black pepper

Heat water in a large pot. When it boils, put the pasta in the pot, add a few drops olive oil, this will prevent the  bucatini sticks(?) from sticking to each other. And boil it for 10 minutes. Takeit from fire, put it under cold water and drain. Put it in an oven tray, add crumbled feta cheese with parsley and mix them.

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Mix milk, flour, egg, olive oil, salt and black pepper together until smooth. Seperate a little of this mixture aside and pour the rest on pasta and mix. Spread the seperated milk mixture on its top. Cook it in oven for about 30 minutes. Then take it out and put the grated  kasar cheese evenly on the pasta. Put it back into the oven and cook it until the cheese melts (about 5-7 min). Serve it cutting in squares.

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Topinambur With Olive Oil

When I searched for its English translation, I found several names for this strange vegetable. Some of them are jerusalem artichoke(does it have a relation with Jerusalem?), sunchoke, sunroot and earth apple, but I loved topinambur the most among these. I don’t know where this word is coming from, but I love the sound in it. When I first read it aloud, I thought it sounded like the meaningless words used by illusionists. We call it ‘yer elması’ in Turkish, meaning earth apple.

Although they have a very ugly texture, I find topinamburs so cute with their craggy structure and different color. Despite its unusual look, it is a great source of glucose and minerals. And it is generally advised to people who can’t gain weight as it has a fattening effect. I wasn’t aware of this until my hubby bought some a few years ago. Yes, I had heard its name several times before, but hadn’t tasted until then. I didn’t have any idea about how to eat it. I didn’t even know if it is in the category of vegetable or fruit. He grabbed a knife and cut one of the topinamburs, peeled it and ate it cutting into slices. He was eating it just like an apple. When I got a bite of it, I felt itwas so much like raw potato. Then I decided to try cooking it in the same way with celery root.

I must also say that it is not so easy to chop topinamburs. It may sound nonsense, but I definitely feel that I’m chopping a living thing when I see some pinkish lines inside it which look like blood vessels. That’s why it is hard to chop them.

Zeytinyağlı Yer Elması
Ingredients
- 500g topinambur,chopped

- 2 carrots, chopped

- 1 onion, chopped

-  Half lemon

-  Half orange

-  1 sugar cube

- Salt to taste

-  3 tbsp extra virgin oliveoil

-  Celery leaves

-1/2 cup water

Put the chopped topinamburs in a bowl and squeeze half lemon on it. This will prevent the topinamburs from blackening.

Saute the onions and carrots with olive oil in a pot. Then put the chopped topinamburs with the lemon juice, squeeze half orange. Add a sugar cube and salt and stir. Pour water after 5 minutes. Then cover the pot and lower the heat. Cook it until carrots and topinamburs tender. Serve it with some celery leaves, either warm or cold.

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Lemon Cake For Blogoversary

It has been a long time since I wrote my last post. I have been working till late hours, so I can not even write back to your so much valuable comments. Hope you understand me. I couldn’t even realize that Give Recipe left a year behind until my hubby reminded me 4 days ago. He asked, “Aren’t you thinking of making something special to celebrate our child’s birthday?” You see, Give Recipe is like our child as he says I spend a big part of my time either dealing with it or thinking about it. I know I’ve neglected it since the school started (working as a teacher) but it’s always on my mind. However, I’m grateful to hubby for reminding me of my first blogoversary.

It was on a weekday and unfortunately, I couldn’t make anything special, so I had to postpone it to this weekend. I was decisive on making something sweet as I think it’s not a real celebration if there is nothing sweet. I thought a lamon cake would be great to celebrate a blogoversary. And ofcourse it wouldn’t be a real celebration without some guests, so we called a few friends and enjoyed this cake together with Turkish black tea.

Finally, thanks a million to everyone for visiting Give Recipe and for helping me improve it with your comments, suggestions and questions.

Limonlu Kek
Ingredients
-    100g butter (at room temperature)
-    125g sugar
-    4 eggs
-    50ml (1/4 cup) milk
-    Rind of 1 lemon, grated
-    300g flour
-    1tbsp baking powder
For the jam on the top:
-    1 lemon
-    2 tbsp sugar
-    5 tbsp water
Preheat the oven at 180C (350F).

Mix butter and sugar, add eggs and beat well until smooth. Pour milk in it and mix. Put grated lemon rind and flour, whisk with a spatula. Take a tbsp baking powder and squeeze a few drops of lemon on it. This will help the cake rise well.

Oil the cake mould (I used a rectangular one) and pour the batter into it and bake for 45 minutes. You know how to check if it’s done at the end of this duration. Just use a toothpick; if it comes out clean, it means you can take it from oven.

As a big fan of lemon, I don’t want to waste any part of it. Believe or not, I eat lemons with their rinds, they are not different from any other fruits. Most of my friends find it weird, but I do love the bitterish taste of their rind. When preparing the cake butter, I thought it would be great to garnish it with some slices of lemon rind. But not to have a bitter taste (no problem for me), I must find a way to make them sweet (for my friends). I just followed the steps similar to my usual jams, just in small amounts. You can play with the amounts of sugar and water here according to your taste.

So when you put the cake aside, you can prepare the lemon jam to make your cake have a ‘lemon’ cake look. Slice the lemon rind thinly, put them in a small pan, add sugar and water in it. Heat it ove medium heat stirring occasionaly until the sugar melts. When it starts to boil, add a few drops of lemon in it. You will see it becomes thicker after adding lemon juice. Then you can take it from heat and garnish your cake.

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Cookies With Dates

We have started to count down for 2010. Everyone has been thinking of the good and bad points of the leaving year these days. When you turn on the TV, you see several programs on the events of 2009 and all people have wishes for the new year.

How was 2009 for my part? I was planning to create this blog at this time last year(2008). After discussing several things of the blog with hubby (thanks a million my dear for your help), we released Give Recipe in the first weeks of 2009. I remember how excited I got when I received the first comment. Now there are over 2000 comments in my blog, but I still get excited by a new one. Thank you everyone for commenting on my posts, I appreciate them much. The number of the posts is 153 with this one, and Give Recipe’s character has been getting more and more clear through these posts. At the beginning I wasn’t aware of how big the place of Give Recipe in my life would be, but I’ve realized before long that there isn’t a single day I don’t think of it. Also, I’ve had the chance of learning about the world of food blogs since the starting of Give Recipe. I have many blogger friends and I’ve learnt lots of new dishes from them so far. As I’m working as a teacher, I’ve been so busy with my students and school works for some months. That’s why I can’t find enough time to follow my favorite food blogs and commenting on them every time. But I’m trying to visit them whenever I have some time. I’m looking forward to Winter break to have more time to catch up what my friends are doing in their blogs.

The other nice event for me in 2009 was the birth of my niece, the cutest baby around the world. I love her so much that my eyes get full of tears whenever I look at her photo. I wish her all the best.

To say a sweet goodbye to 2009, I made these cookies with date. The best thing I love in them is the orange flavor. The cubes of orange zest are like little gifts hidden in the cookies.

Happy new year to everyone!

Hurmalı Kurabiye
Ingredients (8 or 10 servings)
For the dough:
-    2 cups flour
-    ½ cup ground pistachio
-    ½ cup confectioner’s sugar
-    1 tbsp vanilla
-    1 tbsp baking powder
-    1 egg white
-    125g butter, at room temperature and chopped in cubes
For the filling mixture:
-    1 orange zest, sliced in cubes
-    2tbsp orange juice
-    20 dates
-    3 tbsp ground hazelnut
-    2 tbsp hot water

For the filling mixture, remove the seeds of dates and wait them in hot water for some minutes so that they can be chopped easier.

Put the dates into a mini chopper, add hot water and orange juice and chop them. If it’s still so dry, add a little more hot water and mix together until combined well. Add hazelnut and orange zest cubes in this mixture.

Sift the flour on the counter. Add vanilla, pistachio, baking powder and confectioner’s sugar on it.  In the middle of the flour, toss the butter cubes and eg white. Knead this mixture well until it’s not sticky and soft enough.

Lay the baking sheet on an oven tray.

Preheat the oven at 170C.

Take walnut sized pieces from the dough, flatten them out, put enough filling mixture in them and roll them in your hands. Place the cookies on the baking sheet. Bake them for 20 minutes and take out from oven. Let them cold.

You can keep these in jars for a week. Put some orange zest slices in the jar if you like. It gives a fresh smell to the cookies.

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Rosehip Tea

Rosehip is a herbal miracle that I learnt from dad. He is one of those who hates using medicine and prefers herbal remedy instead. He always says that the nature always serves us what we need. I was so surprised as a child by dad’s knowledge on some herbs when we had a walk around the village where he spent his childhood. When passing along some wild bushes, he would stop, pick a few small fruits, rub them on his clothes to remove the dust and throw one into his mouth and give the rest to me. I didn’t have any single idea what I was eating then as we wouldn’t see such fruits at the markets or bazaars (we still don’t see many of them). They were incredibly fresh and they made me feel like I was in a different world (most probably because I would watch “Alice in Wonderland” then). How was it possible that he knew so much about these interesting fruits or herbs? He said that in his childhood, the children of that village would gather and go exploring on the mountains. As there were no computer games in their time, they would create their own games then. Their games would generally contain the things they could find in forests on mountains. They would invent a game from the twigs of bushes or trees, from dandelions or even from pine cones. And while playing in the forest, dad says that they would never feel hungry as they would snack various wild fruits they came across. In this way, they would learn what fruit was edible by experimenting. Sounds like a real learning in nature, doesn’t it?

Rosehip was one of the wild fruits they would see so often in the forest. And they would fill their pockets with rosehips whenever they saw it as they knew how healthy it was. When they empty their pockets at home, their mom would make either rosehip tea or rosehip marmalade.

Being aware of the benefits of rosehip, dad has turned it into a usual tea for us by making it often. Therefore, the word ‘rosehip’ doesn’t remind us of a disease unlike many people who identify this fruit with the flu. Of course, it’s known as one of the best herbal remedies against the flu and it strengthens immune system, but at the same time it’s a great drink with a sourish flavor. In Winter you can drink it hot, and it makes a perfect cold drink in Summer. Even when dried, it doesn’t lose the vitamins it contains. Experts say that it is a stock of vitamin C, about 40 times more than citrus fruits.

It’s so easy to make the rosehip tea, and you will need a teapot to brew the tea.

Kusburnu Cayi

Ingredients
-    A handful rosehip (about 10 pods)
-    5 or 6 cups of water
-    Honey

Pour the water in the teapot. Throw the rosehips into it. Put its lid on. Heat it over medium heat for about 5 minutes. When it starts to boil, bring it to the lowest heat and keep boiling for about 10 minutes. Then take it from fire. Let it rest for about 5 minutes. Then, pour it to cups and sweeten it with a little honey.

If you would like to drink it cold, pour all into a jug, mix it with honey or sugar and wait it in refrigerator until cold.

If you want to make it just for 2 servings (just like I did yesterday), decrease the given measurements. I used a coffeepot and pour 2 small cups of water in it and 5 rosehip pods were enough.

As a Winter drink (sorry for the photo, the batteries of my camera was about to end).

As a Summer drink

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Tutmac Soup

While shopping in our local bazaar last week, I saw a woman selling some traditional soup ingredients on a very small stand in front of her. You may wonder what I mean with soup ingredients. Hee, women prepare some soup ingredients and keep them for Winter. They are like the healthy and delicious version of industrially-made soups. Some of these ingredients were varieties of noodle like dough pieces; some of them are in strips, some are in tiny squares. In addition, there were also the varieties of tarhana, which is a sun dried soup ingredient mainly containing several grounded vegetables and yogurt. All these were in plastic bags of 1 kg. You know I love talking to such ladies in bazaar, I assume that they know a lot of things about cooking, so I never miss the chance of talking to them in bazaar. That lady didn’t look like a usual bazaar seller, she was different as she wasn’t calling customers, she was just sitting behind her small stand and waiting for foodies interested in traditional soups. She said that she herself made all these soup ingredients, which means a plus for me. These ingredients are all unique as ou can’t find them at supermarkets. They don’t have a company product version, so such ladies are like great treasures if you don’t have time to prepare the ingredients yourself. Among all the ingredients on her stand, these teeny weeny squares took my attention. They were just like the ones mom used to make. It was surprising for me to see it in the bazaar miles away from my hometown. The lady’s recipe for this soup was different from mom’s, but I prefered to make it in mom’s style as I was sure it would take me to my childhood.

When she was younger, mom used to make our own bread like phyllo sheets and they would meet our monthly bread need. We wouldn’t buy bread loaves then. And whenever there was some piece of dough left, she would make these tiny squares from it. I mean she wouldn’t prepare the dough just for making the squares, but made these just after finishing rolling the phyllo sheets. The soup made of these squares are called Tutmac Soup or Kesme Soup.

The procedure to make these tumac squares is almost the same with Thimble Soup(Yüksük Corbasi), so you can check the recipe for the dough here. The only difference is that you will cut the squares even smaller and you will not stuff them with anything. After cutting them, dry them in a preheated oven over 170C for about 15-20 minutes. Then put them in jars and you can keep them for months. Whenever you want to make a traditional soup for your guests, you can make tutmac soup with these squares.

Tutmac Corbasi
Ingredients
- 1 cup green lentil
- ½ cup tutmac squares
- 5 or 6 cups water
- ½ lemon, squeezed
- 1 tbsp pepper paste (or 2 tbsp tomato paste)
- 1 onion, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, sliced
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1 tbsp dried mint
- Salt to taste

Boil the green lentils until tender and drain to get rid of its black water. Pour 5 cups of water in a pot, add lentils and bring it to boil. When it boils, add the squares and boil until they get soft (about 10-15 minutes). Pour the lemon juice. Take it from fire.

Melt the butter in a pan, saute the onions and garlic in it. Put pepper paste and dried mint, mix until combined. Pour this mixture in the pot, sprinkle some salt, stir and bring it to boil.

If you like, you can drizzle some yogurt on it.

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Zucchini Fritters

There are several vegetables used to make fritters, but zucchini is the most prefered one in Turkish cuisine. There are several reasons why Turkish women generally use zucchini for fritters. First, it  helps digestion system of body. You don’t feel bloated when you eat fritters made of zucchini. There is another reason for Turkish moms to favour zucchini while making fritters. You know moms always wish their children eat all vegetables and zucchini is one of the vegetables that children hardly love to eat.   However, I can’t think of a child who refuses these small and cute fritters. Knowing this, clever moms make fritters to make their children love this light vegetable. As this is not a main dish, moms generally make these as a snack before dinner time when their children come back from school.

Also, zucchini fritters enrich friend meetings in the afternoon. Turkish women try to serve various snacks when they invite some friends. Some of these snacks are a kind of borek, stuffed grapevine leaves, kisir, potato salad, lentil balls, cigarette borek, etc. And zucchini fritters are one of these snacks that is served to guests on a plate with some sliced tomatoes and cucumbers.

The last reason to prefer zucchini for fritters is that Turkish women want to put leftover zucchinis in use. When making stuffed zucchini, they carve their inside out and they don’t use these in stuffing mixture. As they don’t want to waste these, they generally put them in a plastic bag and keep in refrigerator for the following day. They make fritters from these at breakfast or as a snack for their children. So if you stuff zucchinis, do not throw their insides away.

Kabak Mucver

Ingredients
-    2 zucchinis
-    1 cup crumbled feta cheese
-    2 eggs
-    8 tbsp flour
-    Half bunch of parsley
-    Half bunch of fresh dill
-    1 tbsp baking powder
-    1 tsp salt
-    1 tsp black pepper
-    ½ cup vegetable oil to fry

Grate the zucchinis and squeeze their juice with your hands.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Add cheese and whisk.

Mince the parsley and dill. Put them in the egg mixture.

Finally, add flour, baking powder, salt and black pepper and mix them all until combined.

Heat the oil in a skillet. Take a little mixture with a tablespoon and throw it in the pan. Put as many pieces as your pan contains. When one side is fried (in about a minute), flap the other side. When both sides are fried, take the fritters and put them on a paper towel to get rid of the excessive oil.

Alternatively, you can cook them in oven instead of frying if you want it without oil. You will just place the fritter mixture with a tablespoon on a baking sheet in an oven tray and cook them at 180C for about 30 minutes until golden.

Serve these fritters with some greens or sliced tomatoes and cucumbers.

Healthy Vegetables

An eggplant, a carrot, a green pepper and a zucchini are close friends in the same neighborhood. They love to spend time together; they go swimming, play tennis, and have a morning walk together. In fact, the zucchini is the one who encourages them to have such an active life. Unlike the other vegetables, who love to mess around at home, the zucchini always try to be active to be fit. She always reminds her friends that they are vegetables, which means they must do exercise to stay healthy. She always tries different methods to persuade the other vegetables to exercise. This time she takes her friends to a dance club and maybe because of the lively music or the lovely costumes, they all enjoyed to be there. The zucchini thinks that she eventually finds the best way for her friends to exercise as they all promise to attend the club regularly.(drawing by mom)

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Tags: fritters, mucver, snacks, zucchini

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