Domates Mücveri

You cannot wring out a tomato, so the tomatoes are crushed into the batter and flour does the drying instead of the hands.

Egg. Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains egg.

Ingredients

• 700 g ripe tomatoes
• 1 onion, grated and squeezed
• a large bunch of mint, chopped
• a handful of parsley, chopped
• 200 g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper flakes
• 2 teaspoons salt
• sunflower oil, for shallow frying

Method

1. YOU CANNOT WRING OUT A TOMATO, SO FLOUR DOES THE DRYING INSTEAD OF THE HANDS. This is the whole problem the recipe solves, and it is why it is built the opposite way round from the courgette fritter on its own page. A courgette can be grated, salted and squeezed into a dry pad, so it needs barely any flour. A tomato is mostly water held in a pulp, and squeezing it just destroys it -- so instead the tomatoes are crushed deliberately into the batter, and twice as much flour goes in to take up what they release. Two hundred grams against a hundred, for the same sort of weight of vegetable.
2. THE TOMATOES ARE DESEEDED AND CRUSHED BY HAND, NOT BLENDED. Halved, the seeds and jelly scooped out with a finger and discarded -- that is the wettest part and the part with least flavour -- then the flesh squashed between the fingers into rough pieces. A blender gives a thin uniform purée that no amount of flour will thicken into a batter that holds.
3. THE BATTER IS LEFT TO STAND FOR TWENTY MINUTES, WHICH IS THE OPPOSITE OF THE COURGETTE ONE. Here the standing is wanted: the flour hydrates and takes up the tomato liquid, and the batter visibly thickens from pourable to spoonable. Fried immediately, it spreads thin in the pan and will not hold together.
4. MINT IS THE HERB, NOT DILL. A large bunch of it. Mint and tomato is the pairing the dish is built on, and dill against tomato tastes wrong in a way that is hard to place.
5. THEY GO INTO HOTTER OIL AND COOK LONGER THAN A COURGETTE FRITTER. There is far more water to drive off. Four minutes a side, and they should be properly dark at the edges before they are turned -- pale ones are wet inside.
6. THE ONION IS GRATED AND SQUEEZED EVEN THOUGH THE TOMATOES ARE NOT. It can be wrung out, so it is -- there is no reason to add more water to a batter already fighting it.
7. The tomatoes halved, the SEEDS AND JELLY SCOOPED OUT and discarded.
8. The flesh CRUSHED BY HAND into rough pieces. Not blended.
9. The onion grated and SQUEEZED dry.
10. Everything combined with the mint, parsley, egg, Aleppo pepper and salt.
11. The flour and baking powder stirred in -- 200 g, twice what a courgette fritter needs.
12. LEFT TO STAND 20 MINUTES, until the batter thickens from pourable to spoonable.
13. A few millimetres of oil heated in a wide pan, hotter than for a courgette fritter.
14. Spoonfuls dropped in and flattened slightly.
15. Fried 4 MINUTES a side, until DARK at the edges before turning.
16. Drained on kitchen paper.
17. TESTED: broken open, it should be set through with no wet centre. Pale and soft means the batter did not stand or the oil was cool.
18. Eaten warm.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Turkey · All recipes