hippie food at its finest

Dinner tonight was insanely awesome. Courtesy of my food processor, it was also insanely easy.

Veggie patties of delight!

We begin with, wait for it, Sesame Carrot Patties with Sriracha Aioli, a gorgeous phrase if I’ve ever heard one. I salivated over the pictures on Foodbuzz and then the singular beautiful combination of syllables in “Sriracha aioli” pushed me to finally actually make it.

Extraordinary: carrots, nuts, and oatmeal ground in the food processor have THE EXACT SAME texture and stickiness as ground beef. It’s almost eerie.

Stirred and seasoned with cumin, paprika, and so on deliciousness…

It then formed beauuuuutifully into patties! I’ve had so much epic fail on patties this week. It felt good to win one. They then chilled.

And once the beautiful patties sat up, I stuck 'em on a griddle brushed with oil and cooked until each side was a lovely brown.

Seriously, there are no words. I cannot wait to make this again. Like, as soon as possible. The combination of flavors and the luscious texture... NO WORDS!

But don't put away that griddle yet!

So I have a problem called I cannot stop acquiring cookbooks. So I’ve decided to deal with my addiction by getting them for FREE, at the library. This caught my eye:

And I set out to make, wait for it, Moroccan zucchini pancakes! So fun, right?!

You start by pureeing squash and onion, and then draining out the water. I found the most effective and environmentally friendly way to do this was to spread the shredded veggies on a kitchen towel, wrap it, and then squeeze the water out.

You then combine this with water, eggs, salt and pepper, and, the secret ingredient that Moroccanifies it- fresh mint! From the same bouquet as the catnip that got Sheila high, awww. My friend was over while I was mixing it up and he went “uhh… what holds it together?” and though I scoffed at his lack of confidence (in the same conversation, he said “So making the squash is basically this is like making easy Mac, except I add water TO it and you take water OUT of it”) and I said the eggs would work as a binder, I was kind of worried that it wouldn’t hold together. But it did!

I found the best technique for griddlin’ (everyone was made in the same food processor and then the same griddle! So efficient, I LOVE it) was to take a scoop (I used a heaping quarter cup) of batter, dump it down on the griddle, and then whack it down with my spatula. This is illustrated not particularly well in this picture.

All cooked, ohhhhhhhhhh yesssssssssss. Like a latke’s sexy cousin here for the summer.

Ground, griddled, and gobbled. Yay for hippie food!

And lest we forget, what started it all, the SRIRACHA AIOLI! I added more Sriracha than the recipe called for. Obviously. This was luscious on the carrot patties… and then I just got the jar of Sriracha again and started dumping that straight up on the zucchini patties and THAT was luscious too!