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Kolokithokeftedes (sort of)

This recipe is my attempt to reconstruct a dish I had in Crete. I don’t know if it would pass the Greek grandmother test, but it’s probably close enough that she’d recognise what it was attempting.

Kolokithokeftedes [courgette balls/fritters/croquettes]

4 courgettes (zucchini)
3 spring onions (scallions), including most of the green bit
a clove of garlic
fresh dill
fresh mint
100g feta cheese

& plain flour and olive oil

Grate the courgettes, salt them, and leave in a colander for half an hour. Then squeeze out as much of the juice as possible.

Crush the garlic, chop the onion, herbs and feta, and mix it all together with the courgette. Season it (though remember the feta is quite salty). Form this mixture into little patties, flour them and fry them in olive oil. You can also just eat the raw mixture by the spoonful; it would make a nice salad in its own right.

A couple of notes: I pan-fried them in quite a couple of millimetres of oil; you could probably deep-fry them if you prefer. Handle them carefully and don’t poke them around too much, because there’s not much in the mixture to bind it together. Make sure there’s enough flour on them, because it helps them colour up and hold together. And make sure the oil is reasonably hot; you want the outside browned but the inside still green and fresh-tasting.

These were good, and certainly similar to the ones I had in Crete, though not quite the same, somehow. If I was going to change one thing I might put in marginally less feta, to let the green flavours come through better.