Thursday 27 May 2010

Courgette Cakes

The courgettes season is almost upon us.  They are probably one of the most versatile vegetables. Steamed, grilled, roasted with Mediterranean vegetables, diced in soups, used in stir fries and especially delicious, courgette cakes.

If you are growing Courgettes, start collecting the recipes now. They are probably the easiest vegetable to cultivate and are very fast growers. Its best to harvest them before they get to Marrow size. The smaller, the tastier. Try thinly sliced courgette in a salad with grated carrot and shavings of Fennel.

Courgette Cakes

200g courgettes, grated
2 shallots, chopped
2 spring onions, chopped
2tbsp olive oil
1 green chilli, finely chopped
50g breadcrumbs, made with brown bread
1 egg, beaten
50g Gruyere cheese, grated
1tbsp fresh Coriander, chopped
1/4tsp salt
Freshly milled black pepper

Squeeze the water out of the grated courgette and place in a large bowl.
Fry the shallots and spring onions in a little olive oil to soften. Add the chilli and remove from the heat. Add the mixture to the courgettes, then add the breadcrumbs, egg, cheese, Coriander, salt and pepper.  Form into balls and flatten to make patties.
Fry in olive oil, over a medium heat, turning a couple of times, until golden and crisp on the outside.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Mary,

    Last week for fundraising I used your cake receipe's for the cake sale at work. I am thinking of doing another sale at work, but this time I was thinking about selling savoury food. Someone at work made vegetable samosa's and they went down really well. However I am not sure if this is economically a good idea as I need to make as much profit as possible. Do you have any ideas what sort of savoury food I could sell? If you don't think its a good idea, I'll go back to the cakes as they were so successful last time. Thanks Gem

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Gemma

    Savoury snacks are a good idea but you may want to ask friends and colleagues what they would prefer, savoury or sweet?
    The pitfall of savoury snacks is, that a lot of them would be better eaten warm ie Quiche tartlets, sausage rolls, savoury pies, filo parcels etc.
    Perhaps this time you could make 1 large carrot cake, for instance and sell raffle tickets. Maybe a batch of cheese straws (recipe on 4 May blog). They are delicious and very hard to resist. On my "Bring back the picnic" blog, 26 April, there is a recipe for mini pasties which you can make with a variety of fillings. Make sure you price up all your ingredients first and work out what price you would have to charge to make a profit for your charity.
    Good luck Gemma. Let me know if I can help any further.

    Mary

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