Developer and Photographer | Amber Wilkie

AGNTAGNM Workday Lunch #3: Zucchini fritters

This recipe is adapted from Smitten Kitchen, where she takes prettier pictures in her light-filled and not a total disaster-area kitchen and also gives more of a damn. Things not to judge me about on this post: the dirtiness of my stove; the dirtiness and lack of put-away dishes on my counter; the fact that we had no paper towels on this day so I drained my fritters on a lunch bag. Things to tell me are so great about me and my cooking: I'm using a cast-iron to deep-fry things in; I made this shit from scratch; I used a paper bag to drain my fritters. Zucchini fritters! They are so goddamn tasty. I will go ahead and say zucchini fritters are the yummiest things you can do with zucchini, and I don't hate on zucchini or anything. They are just that good. They're also really hard to screw up. You need just a few things:

• Zucchini - 2 or 3 big 'uns
• Flour - 1/4 cup or so
• Egg - just one
• Scallions - for fancy people, totally optional
• Way more oil than you feel comfortable pouring into a pan

You will also want to eat these with a sour cream, garlic and lemon sauce. Just mix those things together and let them sit while you do the rest of the stuff. Oh, and you must buy Trader Joe's Organic Sour Cream - not low-fat shit, not hormone cow shit - that exact product. I have been eating sour cream my whole life and it's like the juice of the gods themsel.... well, just buy that stuff. It's tasty. Here's what you do. First, get a clean kitchen towel. (PS - there are only two items you can buy for me that I will be 100% sure to love - chocolate and kitchen towels. I freakin' adore kitchen towels. You can never have enough.) Spread it wide on your counter, then get out your box grater and grate the hell out of the zucchini - the big holes will do. Grate it all up good, spread it out on the towel and give it a serious dose of salt. (I don't need to list salt as an ingredient because if you don't have it in your kitchen, you really shouldn't be reading recipes.) Fold it on up, put your big-ass cast iron on top to weigh it down. And if you're me, go catch up on a Netflix show (I believe it was The L Word at the time, but you could get away with Arrested Development - give the zucchinis 20 minutes to drain.) Now get a big bowl, dump the shredded zucchini out of the towel. Then throw in some flour (around 1/4 c - just get some in there, it's hard to go wrong), an egg and a couple of scallions' worth of cut-up scallion. Mix it up. Then put way more oil than you feel comfortable pouring into a pan into your big-ass cast-iron and let it heat up. No, like a while. Don't put your fritters in while the oil is cold. To test, get a little bit of mix and drop it in the pan. If it doesn't start bubbling immediately, it needs more time to heat up. Once the oil is hot, get a spoon and grab medium-size spoonfuls of zucchini mix and drop 'em in the oil. Mush 'em so they more or less resemble flattish discs (how flat? how disc? see picture for how little this matters.) Give 'em three minutes on each side, then transfer to a paper towel to drain (or a paper bag, whatever you have on hand to absorb oil). Cook the whole batch and just keep stacking paper towels and draining. The ones on the bottom will get cold, but this makes enough for some leftovers anyway. You'll eat the last batch fresh. When they're all done, eat them with the sour cream mix and just sit around going "ohhhhhhh my godddddddd these are so good." And don't even think about putting the leftovers in the microwave. If you don't have a toaster oven, it's well worth the investment just to reheat these bad boys. And the second-best thing about this recipe (the first, of course, being the fritters you just ate) is that basically anything with a high water content can be frittered. Broccoli, squash, chickpeas (cooked), greens, eggplant, etc. etc. etc. - just shred or mash and complete as before. Anything can be frittered  - it's a super-versatile dish. Now go fritter away your lunch. You're welcome.