zucchini cakes with feta and... thyme

grating courgettes
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

I came home with some zucchini (courgette) from the Turkish shop and decided to make Nigel Slater's "zucchini cakes" from his Kitchen Diaries book. Start off with grating 2 smallish light green zucchini in a colander, add some salt and let drain for 15 minutes or so. Chop a small onion very finely and saute in a little bit of olive oil until translucent, but not coloured. Drain the zucchini and pat dry with kitchen towels, or squeeze them between your hands to get rid of the excess juices. I thought I did a good job there (more on this later...) . Add the zucchini to the pan with the onions and add one clove of minced garlic, and stir around. Add 3 tablespoons of flour and cook for a little while. Then, take off the heat and add one egg, 100 grams of crumbled feta cheese and some dill. I didn't have any dill around, so I switched to thyme, which goes well with zucchini, too. However, the mixture turned out to be a little too runny, so when I fried them in the pan, they took on a much flatter and wider shape then they should have. To rescue things, I added some more flour to the zucchini and even some dried bread crumbs to make the mixture more compact, but still, they didn't turn out quite as well as I expected (Nigel only says they are 'fragile', but my zucchini cakes almost collapsed when being turned.) Even so, their taste was excellent. The zucchini didn't have the raw taste I get sometimes when making zucchini cakes- because you kind of precook the mixture before frying the cakes. A very good tip. Will try again, but with more flour... Had this with fried chicken and a mustard green salad. You can view my whole cooking process of zucchini cakes on Flickr.