Recipe - Zucchini Fritters
A friend at work was told last Monday that his blood sugar was up to 15. He already knew he was a type 2 diabetic, but he didn’t realise it was as bad as it was.
“Any higher and it may be the hospital for you,” said his doctor. “As it is, we’ll start stomach injections next week.”
He’d previously said to me that he was interested in the plant based diet but that it was too restrictive for him. His opinion changed with the news of the sky high blood sugar levels. I gave him a copy of my vegan recipe book the next day, and explained the basics of eating well as we sat on our lunchbreak.
After 7 days, his blood sugar is now down from 15 to 8. If he keeps up the vegan wholefood diet and stays off the meat, dairy, seafood and processed stuff, and he starts exercising more, he should get it down to under 7 quite soon and be fine. No hospital or injections needed.
I thought there might be more of you out there who would welcome some down to earth, tasty recipes. Health food, home style. So I'm going to start to put some on here every so often.
If you’d like my book, you can put your name on the waitlist for when it gets reprinted (it’s sold out at the moment) by emailing me at drwise100@gmail.com. No point looking on Amazon or any large bookshop chain for it, I don't sell through any of them.
You can also also follow me on social media so you get alerted when I put another recipe on this blog.
If you’d like to request a recipe, maybe you’d like to veganize a favourite dish, or make a comfort food healthy, then I ask you to email me with your request. If I think I can do it I’ll ask you to make a donation - $20 minimum - to the Indian Residential Schools Survivors Society (https://www.irsss.ca/) - and then I’ll begin work and post the recipe on here after a week.
Traditionally, in many parts of mainland Greece, these fritters are made with just zucchini, spices and perhaps some flour or breadcrumbs. In Crete, they often add potato and carrot. I’ve taken it a bit further by adding rice, lentils, flax, and chia. They come out firm, tasty, and very healthy.
You can also also follow me on social media so you get alerted when I put another recipe on this blog.
If you’d like to request a recipe, maybe you’d like to veganize a favourite dish, or make a comfort food healthy, then I ask you to email me with your request. If I think I can do it I’ll ask you to make a donation - $20 minimum - to the Indian Residential Schools Survivors Society (https://www.irsss.ca/) - and then I’ll begin work and post the recipe on here after a week.
Traditionally, in many parts of mainland Greece, these fritters are made with just zucchini, spices and perhaps some flour or breadcrumbs. In Crete, they often add potato and carrot. I’ve taken it a bit further by adding rice, lentils, flax, and chia. They come out firm, tasty, and very healthy.
Ingredients
5 medium size zucchini.2 cups of grated carrot.
2.5 cups of cooked brown rice.
0.5 cups of cooked green or red lentils.
1 cup chopped fresh green herbs (I used mint and basil).
1 cup breadcrumbs.
1 cup brown flour.
1 tsp garlic powder.
1 tsp onion powder.
3 tsp salt.
3 chia eggs, and 3 flax eggs (use ground chia and flax, and make the eggs dry, with 1 tbsp of chia or flax to 1.5 tbsp water).
Method
Cook the rice and lentils. I put them in a rice cooker together and use any leftovers for a stir fry or gallo pinto the next day.Grate the zucchini and put it in a bowl along with 2 tsp of the salt. Mash it all up well with your hands, squeezing it so the water comes out. Then take handfuls of it out, give it a firm final squeeze to get all the water out, and put it in a colander over a pot. You want to get as much of the water out as possible so the fritters won’t be soggy.
Leave the zucchini in the colander for half an hour. In the meantime, grate the carrot and make the chia and flax eggs.
After half an hour squeeze the zucchini again, you probably won’t get much water out now, and put the zucchini into a fresh bowl. Add all the other ingredients except for the breadcrumbs and give it a good mix with your hands. Then add half cup of the breadcrumbs and mix again. If it feels too wet, add a little more flour. If you didn’t squeeze enough water out, you may need to do this. It’s better to get the water out than add flour though so the fritters won’t taste too doughy.
Once well mixed, put it all into the fridge, uncovered, for an hour. This will help dry it out more.
I shallow fry, because I like them better that way. I figure that if all the fat I use in this dish is a couple of tbsp of olive oil split between 5 burgers then it’s not much to worry about.
Eat immediately. You’ll likely have enough mix here for between 10 and 12 burgers. I like to make them fresh each time, they’re ok cold the next day but I prefer them freshly cooked, in a bun with lots of salad and a spicy homemade tahini sauce. You can keep the mix in the fridge for up to 5 days.
