Good Girlfriend/Bad Vegan

As promised, here are the Zucchini Fritters that Brian and I made the other night.  

We already made them once before recently, but we wanted to make them for his parents because they were so good.  

I'm already craving them again.  

Brian and I have discussed having a fry night once every few weeks because, otherwise, I think we'd just look for things to fry in this batter every night for dinner.  We've both already gained a little "fat-and-happy" weight during this relationship, so I think making fry night a special occasion is probably the best idea.

Now, traditionally, Vegan recipes are all about starting with a recipe and taking the meat and dairy products out.  I, instead, have been coming up with good Vegan recipes that my meat-and-potatoes boyfriend will enjoy...and that will go well with...

(I'm sorry, Alicia Silverstone)

...chicken.

Good girlfriend.  Bad vegan.

***to be clear, I don't eat the chicken.  

Okay.  Zucchini Fritters.

I apologize for the quality of some of these pictures, still no camera, so these were taken on my iPhone.  

I sure hope the guy who stole my camera is enjoying it.

***

I found this recipe on a great blog, Vegan Epicurean, and you can find the original recipe here.

So, using a cheese grater, shred 2 zucchini.  (If you trim the bottom you can hold onto the stem, which makes it a little easier to hold onto.)

In a large bowl, whisk together your dry ingredients...

• 1 Cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
• 1/4 Cup Finely Ground White Corn Meal
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1 Teaspoon Kosher Salt
• 1 Teaspoon Cumin
• 1 Teaspoon Dried Oregano

Add the zucchini to the dry ingredients so that it is well coated.

The zucchini hold a lot of moisture, so coating them in the flour mixture helps keep the zucchini from settling to the bottom of the batter.

In a small bowl, prepare 1 Egg Replacer...

• 1 1/2 Teaspoons Ground Flax Seed
• 2 Tablespoons of Hot Water

Whisk together and let sit until it is somewhat dissolved, (*some recipes call for leaving it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours, others say just to let it sit for 10 minutes...I'm lazy, I go with 10 minutes...or less.  I think it is probably more important when baking...but 5 minutes worked fine for this recipe.)

• Add 1 Cup Unsweetened Almond Milk to the Egg Replacer
• Combine Wet and Dry Ingredients 

The consistency should be similar to that of pancake batter.
Add more almond milk if your batter is too dry.  I haven't needed to...

Using a 1/4 C measuring cup, spoon the batter into a frying pan, with about 2 Tablespoons of canola oil, over Medium High heat.

When the batter in the middle starts to bubble, (much like pancakes,) flip the fritters.  

They probably cook for 3-5 minutes on each side, but you can eye ball it.  

They're pretty hard to screw up.  

You will probably need to heat up some additional oil in between batches, though.  Fat-and-happy.

Fry Night.  Good Girlfriend/Bad Vegan.
Side note:  Brian is really good at frying chicken.

I've mentioned that I am obsessed with watching cooking shows.  I find vegetarian or vegan recipes from time to time, but I also just love picking up good cooking tips and also finding recipes that are easily converted to a vegan meal.

I watched Sunny Anderson make these Hasselback Potatoes the other day and had to try them.

So.  Easy.  And delicious.

Small Red Potatoes and Garlic

Begin by placing a potato on a wooden spoon.

(This would have worked better if I had used a deeper spoon, but it worked.)

Cut slits in the potatoes, the wooden spoon stops the knife from cutting all the way through.  Fancy.

Thinly slice 3-5 cloves of garlic.

Next, wedge 3 or 4 slices of garlic into each potato.

Yum.

The recipe then says to put the potatoes in a bowl with 2 T of olive oil and 4 T of melted butter, (I used Earth Balance,) but, because I cut my potatoes a little too far down, (you can see where some of them opened up more than others,) I was worried about the garlic falling out, so I did the oil and butter on the baking sheet and just sort of scooted them all around.

This worked fine, but next time I would use less oil and butter as the bottom of the tray was covered in it and smoked a little during cooking.

Also salt and pepper the potatoes before baking.

400 degrees for about an hour.

These were delicious, almost like little garlic potato chips.  I thought I overcooked them a bit, but Brian really liked them, so see what you come up with!

Seriously, you could fry anything in this batter and it'd be amazing.

Brian actually fried a piece of chicken in the zucchini mixture and loved it.

I am thinking about trying chunks of vegetables...maybe squash or eggplant.

Yum.

Here's hoping that you have somebody to stand next to while you fry ethically opposing meals.

Until then.