Crispy Courgette 'Fritters' with a Gingery Lemon Dressing

Crispy Courgette 'Fritters' with a Gingery Lemon Dressing

I picked up a punnet of big, perfect courgettes yesterday and, seduced by their bright, tight, blemish-free skins, bought them with the intention of using them in a stir-fry. 

But they were rather lacking in flavour (which just goes to show that, in the world of courgettes, size isn't everything).

So I crumbed and frittered them, in a last burst of deep-frying before the January regime of weak thin gruel begins.

These should be served straight from the pan, hot and rustling, with the gingery vinaigrette as a dipping sauce.

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Crispy Courgette 'Fritters' with a Gingery Lemon Dressing

10 medium-sized courgettes
1 cup (250 ml) very dry breadcrumbs (I used crushed Melba toast)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
a little flour
salt and milled black pepper
oil for deep frying

For the dressing:
2 Tbsp (30 ml) grated fresh ginger
2 Tbsp (30 ml) fresh lemon juice
1 Tbsp (15 ml) white wine vinegar
1 tsp (5 ml) Tabasco sauce
1 tsp (5 ml) sugar
½ cup (125 ml) fruity olive oil
1 tsp (5 ml) salt

First make the dressing. Put a sieve over a bowl, put the grated ginger in the sieve and with your fingers press down on the ginger to extract all the juice. Discard the pulp. Add all the remaining ingredients to the bowl and whisk well. Set aside.

Using a sharp knife, remove the stalks, and cut each courgette in half lengthways. Place the cut side down on a board and, holding the knife blade parallel to the board, and starting at the bottom, cut each half into neat lengthways slices about 3mm thick.  Or use a mandolin with an adjustable blade.

Get out three plates. Put the flour on one plate, the beaten egg in another, and the breadcrumbs on the third.

Heat the oil in a saucepan until it reaches 160 °C. (If you don't have a thermometer, click here for tips). Dip each slice first into the flour, then into the egg, and finally into the crumbs. Press down hard and then shake off any excess. Fry the slices, three to four at a time, for about a minute, or until the crumbs are crisp and golden. Drain well on kitchen paper and serve piping hot, with lemon wedges and the dressing in a separate bowl.

Serves 4 as a snack.

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My Mum's Ginger-Glazed Shortbread

A bite of this heavenly, gingery tea-time treat transported me, in a twinkling, to my childhood. Isn't it curious how a long-forgotten scent or taste can summon dusty memories from the cobwebbiest corners of your brain?

And isn't it strange how a forgotten flavour or texture, when experienced again, can bring other ancient memories fizzing out of your brain banks? I must have been about ten or eleven when I last tasted my mum's ginger shortbread, but, 37 years down the line, a single bite on a biscuit evoked memories I had long forgotten: a beam of sunlight falling through a window, the paisley pattern on a tablecloth, the scent of dry highveld grass, the clink of a spoon against a teacup, the murmur of perfumed ladies and the tinkle of my grandma Peggy's laugh.

I don't know how often my mum made ginger shortbread when I was a child, but it was certainly often enough to imprint its particular perfume on my neural pathways.

I don't have a sweet tooth, and never eat cakes, biscuits, buns or puddings, but I was curious to try this old recipe, which I found in my mum's hand-written Seventies cookbook. The recipe is dead easy, very rich, very sweet and quite delicious. If you have a sour tooth, as I do, reduce the amount of sugar in the glaze, and add a good squeeze of lemon juice.

My Mum's Ginger Shortbread
250 g butter, softened
half a cup (125 ml) icing sugar, sifted
2 and a half cups (625 ml) cake flour
2 tsp (10 ml) baking powder
a pinch of salt
2 tsp (10 ml) powdered ginger

For the glaze:
half a cup (125 ml) icing sugar, sifted
120 g butter
2 tsp (10 ml) powdered ginger
1T (15 ml) golden syrup

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Grease two small (15-20 cm diameter) cake tins. Put the softened butter and icing sugar in a large mixing bowl and, using an electric beater or a whisk, cream together until light and fluffy. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and ginger into the butter mixture and, using your fingertips, combine to form a ball of stiffish dough.

Divide the ball of dough between the two cake tins. Press the dough onto the base of the cake tins and pat smooth. Now, using your thumb, press a crimped pattern into the edges of the dough, so that the perimeter is slightly raised. Prick the dough all over with a fork. Place in the hot oven for 20-30 minutes, or until the shortbread turns golden brown.

While the shortbread is cooking, prepare the glaze. Put all the ingredients into a saucepan, and heat gently, stirring frequently. Do not allow the mixture to boil. (Or place in the microwave on a medium setting, for a minute, stirring once). Give the mixture a good whisk.

Remove the shortbread from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Tip the warm glaze over the shortbread and use a knife to spread it evenly up to the crimped sides. Allow to cool for 10 to 15 minutes and then, using a knife, mark each cake into 8-10 wedges.

When the shortcake is quite cold, remove it from the cake tins and cut, along the marks, into wedges.

Makes 16 wedges. Print Friendly

Woolies frozen ginger - now there's a good idea

Woolworths have recently launched a lekker new product: a pack containing little frozen cubes of puréed fresh ginger, each one a little smaller than a dice (and I mean the sort of dice you play games with). When you're making a stir-fry or curry, you just pop out a few cubes, leave them to defrost (or chuck them in the microwave) and Bob's your uncle.

Purists may scoff at this (but, then again, purists scoff at everything, don't they? And, besides, most purists are restaurant reviewers who have no children to feed, and all day to stooge around the shops) but I love the convenience of not having to lacerate my knuckles trying to grate the wizened-and-sprouting piece of fresh ginger in the vegetable rack, and then plucking the hairy bits from my teeth.

It's strange how freezing things has gone out of fashion. In the early heydeys of the freezer, home cooks were encouraged to freeze everything bar the cat. In fact, the adjective 'frozen' is almost a dirty word when applied to food nowadays.

Look, I am the first to agree that most things lose a bit of flavour and texture when frozen, but - provided that you don't leave them in the freezer for too long - it's really only a little loss, and it's cancelled out by the convenience factor. (Take peas, for example. A pea frozen in its pinnacle of sweetness is so superior to a podded pea that's been sitting and getting starchy under a film of clingwrap).

Here are some things that I've found freeze extremely well (wrapped tightly in plastic)

freshly grated or puréed ginger
whole, peeled garlic cloves (but they must be very young and snappy when you freeze them)
pomegranate seeds
curry leaves, lime leaves and bay leaves
fresh lemon juice (freeze it, in ice-cube trays, within fifteen minutes of squeezing it)
home-made pesto
berries (except for strawberries)
lemon grass
blanched chopped spinach
meringues
butter
herb and/or garlic butter
garlic bread
bacon bits
pork sausages
fresh vanilla beans

Here are a few things, that, in my experience, don't freeze well:

home-made chicken stock (it just never tastes the same as fresh stock)
soups (ditto)
chicken breasts
fish
bananas
fresh parsley, basil and coriander
fresh green chillies
yoghurt
cream
coffee beans
spices (except whole nutmeg) Print Friendly

Easy Power-Failure Sweet Chilli Jam

I bought a gargantuan box of sweet, deep-red tomatoes from my greengrocer yesterday, for a mere thirty ront (R30). What a bargain, I thought as I staggered to my car. Every household needs 5000 tomatoes that promise to reach a pinnacle of ripeness within the next 20 minutes. It only hit me when I got home, and had to hire a forklift to get the box of tomatoes out of my car boot, that perhaps not everyone would appreciate gazpacho for supper for the next six weeks. So all the scarlet lovelies ended up in a Sweet Chilli Jam.

Here's a pic of the finished product
 (I think pictures might enliven this blog a bit,
don't you?)

I didn't have a recipe, and couldn't look for one on the Net, because there was yet another power failure in our area (luckily I have city gas, so I can at least use the hob) so I improvised a quick cheat's recipe, using some old chutney recipes as a guide.

 Stirring and scraping a cauldron of spitting red goo was a good way to while away the hours until the lights finally came on just after darkness fell. I've scaled this recipe down so it makes about 3 jars of sauce.

Excellent on a Cheddar sandwich, in stir-fries, or poured over a disc of ripe Camembert.

Power-Failure Sweet Chilli Jam

12 large, ripe, red tomatoes
2 big red peppers (capsicums)
4 (or more, depending on how hot you'd like your sauce) fresh red chillies
1 thumb-size piece fresh ginger, coarsely grated
2½ cups (625 ml) white sugar (or more, depending on the wateriness and acidity of the tomatoes)
4 Tbsp (60 ml) Balsamic or white wine vinegar
salt to taste

Roughly chop the tomatoes, peppers and chillies (skin, seeds and all) and place in a liquidiser, or a blender fitted with a metal blade, together with the grated ginger. Whizz on the highest setting for a minute until processed to a foamy, thinnish liquid: don't worry if there are pips, or bits and pieces of pith and peel bobbing around. Pour into a large, deep pan and tip in the sugar and the vinegar. Add salt, to taste. Place over a medium heat and bring to the boil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon to dissolve the sugar. Now turn the heat right up and boil vigorously for 30-45 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent the mixture from catching. Use a large flat metal spoon to skim any foam or scum from the surface of the sauce.

In the meantime, rinse three small glass jars (or bottles, or Tupperware blikkies) in very hot water. If you're fastidious (which I am not) you can sterilise them first by microwaving the wet jars on high for three minutes, or by placing them, and their lids, in a clean saucepan of rapidly boiling water for five minutes. Drain upside down on a paper towel.

Taste the mixture - if it's too sweet, add a little more vinegar. When the mixture darkens a little, becomes syrupy and spits angrily when you stir it, it's nearly ready.

If you have a sugar thermometer, bring the mixture up to a few degrees below jam point. Or, much easier, take an ice cube from the freezer and drop a large blob of the mixture on to it. If the mixture, once it's cooled for 20 seconds, slides enthusiastically off the ice cube, you're not there yet - carry on boiling it for a little longer. If the sauce sets to a wobbly, trembling gel within 20 seconds of hitting the ice cube, it's ready.

Remove from the heat and allow to cool for five minutes.

Put a sheet of newspaper under the hot jars and use a ladle to fill each jar almost to the brim. Screw on the lids tightly. If the jars are sticky on the outside, give them a quick rinse under the hot tap before you put them away.

Makes about 700 ml.

POSTSCRIPT: Store the jam in the fridge once you've opened it. I left two open jars in the cupboard and they lasted a month before they started to ferment, and I had to chuck them in the bin. This is probably because I neglected to sterilise the jars properly. Print Friendly