Thursday, June 17, 2010

hippie food at its finest

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

Veggie patties of delight!

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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!

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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.

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

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

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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!

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6 comments:

Heather (Where's the Beach) said...

Oh yummy. Both of those patties sound so good.

Miranda @ MirandasJeans said...

The Ethnic Veggie, I should hunt this book down fosho!

Tamara Marnell said...

Bookmarking the carrot patties! But I only have two carrots left in the refrigerator, so it looks like I'll have to wait to make them until after next week's trip to the grocery store. Boo.

Anne @ Food Loving Polar Bear said...

Wow, I admire you for making your own veggie patties! :)

Unknown said...
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Megan D said...

Wow that really does look like beef, but I bet it tastes much better! I am loving your hippie food!