Courgette Patties

The other day I stumbled across a Bulgarian cookery web site (Bulgarian only). It is the companion to a cookery show, that I believe I've watched once or twice a few years back.

The website is extremely busy with all sorts of things, mostly adverts I think, making it almost impossible to find what you're looking for, but somehow I managed to navigate to the section entitled "Bulgarian cuisine". That had a long list of recipes, both from the TV show and from readers and viewers. So I started looking through it. There were many recipes that were very much not Bulgarian, but had been labelled as such.

One of these (again in Bulgarian only) caught my eye and my mind started working and resulted in today's dinner - courgette patties.

Ingredients

Sauce
500 g strained Greek yoghurt
1 large clove of garlic
salt

10 patties
1 kg courgettes
2 tsp salt
1 large clove of garlic
1 dl chopped parsley
2 tbsp finely cut dill
1 dl finely cut chives
salt and black pepper to taste
2 dl mixture of bread crumbs, sesame seeds, polenta and oat bran
3 medium eggs
grapeseed oil for frying

Method

1. Place the yoghurt into a bowl, press in the garlic and add salt to taste, then stir in well to make it smooth. Place in the fridge until it's time for serving.
2. Trim the courgettes and wash well, then grate finely. Mix with the salt, then place in two layers of cheese cloth over a sieve and leave for at least 15 minutes to drain off the water.
   
3. In the mean time press the garlic into a big bowl, chop the herbs and stir in, along with the black pepper and the breadcrumb mixture.
4. Try to squeeze out as much of the liquid from the courgettes as possible, then add to the herb mixture and stir in well.
5. Stir in the eggs into the mixture so that it just about sticks together. Also add a bit more salt, as the courgettes tend to be on the sweet side.
6. In a large non-stick frying pan, pour grapeseed oil to depth of about 1 cm and heat up on medium.
7. With a large spoon or an ice cream scoop place some of the mixture in the pan, then flatten with a turning utensil. Fry until the patties are golden brown, about 2 minutes on each side.
   
8. Serve immediately with the garlic yoghurt.

I didn't add enough salt and the patties were a bit bland, so must remember to sort it out next time. These patties are quite filling, Lundulph had four and I had three. This left three more to nibble on tomorrow.

I did ask Lundulph for help in squeezing out liquid from the courgettes and that made a huge difference I think. Some sort of small press would come in handy if there's no strong-fingered husband nearby.

The original recipe called for breadcrumbs, but it turned out I had very little left, so I added some sesame seeds, polenta and oat bran from my collection of things to sprinkle on my breads. The sesame seeds were very good and I think I might fry the patties in toasted sesame oil next time, for a more exotic touch.

On the whole, I think the patties were a success and we also had ready made sweet chilli sauce, which worked very well too. So this is a dish to do for the vegetarians at the next family do. And they'd do nicely as starters or with some grilled salmon steak.

I loved the colour too and am glad I decided against peeling the courgettes. Mind you, a processor of some sort for the grating is highly recommended.

Update 2020-04-18:
Last week we had a barbecue and in addition to all the meat, I also bought my regular staple vegetables - aubergines, peppers and courgettes. For some reason, I forgot to prepare the cougettes and they've been screaming at me from the bottom of the fridge.

Thus, I decided to make courgette patties once more (and I can honestly say, I've not done these since the original recipe was published, shame on me, they're very tasty). But reading through my original write-up, I decided to spruce them up a bit, so I added a second clove of garlic to the patty mixture along with two pieces of fresh ginger, the same size as the garlic cloves.

I also had a few scotch bonnet chillies in the fridge, so I added one to the mixture as well, but I made sure to remove the seeds and pith first. I didn't have chives, so added a fat spring onion and rather than chopping/slicing everything finely, I just whizzed it in the food processor. And I fried in toasted sesame oil, so all in all, my pimping worked very well, I'm pleased to say, even if I skipped the yoghurt sauce this time.