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Mücver

The grated courgette is squeezed dry by hand, hard, and the water thrown away.

Egg. Not vegetarian — contains cheese whose rennet the source does not name.

Ingredients

Method

  1. THE GRATED COURGETTE IS SQUEEZED DRY BY HAND, HARD, AND THE WATER THROWN AWAY. Grated, salted, left twenty minutes, then taken up in fistfuls and wrung out over the sink until no more will come. Six hundred grams of courgette gives up most of a cupful, and getting rid of it is the difference between a fritter and a pancake. Water left in the mix dilutes the batter, so more flour goes in to compensate, and what fries is heavy and cake-like with the courgette lost inside it. Wrung out, a hundred grams of flour is enough to bind, and what fries is mostly courgette held together at the edges.
  2. IT IS SQUEEZED IN FISTFULS AND NOT PRESSED IN A SIEVE. Pressing with a spoon gets perhaps half of it. Both hands, a handful at a time, twisted -- it should come out as a dense pad.
  3. THE COURGETTE IS GRATED COARSE, ON THE BIG HOLES. Fine grating turns it to pulp that cannot be wrung and fries into a uniform mass. Coarse shreds survive the squeezing and stay visible and separate in the finished fritter.
  4. THE DILL IS A LARGE BUNCH, NOT A GARNISH. It is the dominant flavour alongside the cheese, and a timid sprinkling leaves the fritters tasting only of fried courgette.
  5. THEY ARE SHALLOW-FRIED AND FLATTENED IN THE PAN. Spoonfuls into a few millimetres of oil and pressed down with the back of the spoon to about a centimetre. Thick ones are raw in the middle when the outside is brown; flattened, they cook through in three minutes a side.
  6. THE BATTER IS MIXED AND FRIED STRAIGHT AWAY. Left to stand, the salted courgette keeps releasing water into the batter it was just wrung out of, and it loosens.
  7. The courgettes grated COARSE, mixed with the salt and left 20 MINUTES.
  8. Taken up in FISTFULS and SQUEEZED HARD over the sink until no more water comes. The water thrown away.
  9. Combined with the cheese, spring onions, dill, parsley, eggs and pepper.
  10. The flour and baking powder folded in -- just 100 g, which is enough because the courgette is dry.
  11. FRIED STRAIGHT AWAY, not left to stand.
  12. A few millimetres of oil heated in a wide pan.
  13. Spoonfuls dropped in and FLATTENED with the back of the spoon to about 1 cm.
  14. Fried 3 MINUTES a side, until deep golden.
  15. Drained on kitchen paper.
  16. TESTED: broken open, it should be visibly shreds of courgette barely held together, not a flour batter with courgette in it.
  17. Eaten warm or cold, with yoghurt.

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