Latkes are usually made with potatoes. But I didn’t have a monster potato that I had to use before it went bad, I had a zucchini.
If this sounds familiar, it’s the same way I started the blueberry peach crisp recipe. There’s a lesson there: You don’t always have to pick a recipe then go buy the ingredients. When you’ve got a garden — or access to a good farmers market — you get the ingredients when they’re ready, then find a recipe to use them in.
Ingredients
4 cups shredded zucchini (don’t peel)
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
1 teaspoon garlic salt
¼ teaspoon oregano
1 tablespoon minced onion
½ cup milk
black pepper to taste
bacon fat or oil for frying
Directions
First step is shredding the zucchini. This one started out like normal … cut the end off and go at it with the cheese grater.
Then something started gumming it up. I cut about three inches off the end and found …
Seeds! I’ve worked with zucchini before but never had to deal with seeds. I talked to a neighbor who also got one of these monsters.
Not only were they huge, check out the price.
(Click to enlarge. Or trust me that it says 75 cents each.)
And if I really wanted to go crazy, I could have gotten this mutant.
Anyway, my neighbor had seeds in hers, too. I guess when you let Zucchini keep growing until they’re freakishly large they develop seeds. Okay, learned something new today.
So I cut that piece in half and scooped out the seeds with a large spoon, then finished grating.
Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl: zucchini, flour, baking powder, eggs, garlic salt, oregano, milk and pepper.
The oregano was from the garden (Yay!) and the milk was buttermilk. The recipe called for milk, but we had some buttermilk left from another recipe and figured it would work just as well. It did.
Stir everything together, but don’t beat it so much you break up the zucchini.
We were having these with bacon, so we did the bacon first and just left the fat in the pan.
Heat the fat to just below the smoke point. The hotter it is, the less greasy the latkes will be. (That’s true for anything you’re frying, by the way.)
SAFETY TIP: If you start seeing smoke, don’t just turn the heat down: pull the pan off the burner. A few wisps of smoke that stop as soon as you pull the pan is okay; a lot of smoke even after it’s off means you’ve scorched it and have to start over with fresh fat. It also means you’re courting a grease fire. Don’t do that.
Scoop about a quarter-cup (one overflowing tablespoon) into the pan and press flat.
Don’t crowd the pan or you’ll have trouble flipping them over.
Cook until brown on the bottom and partway up the side — about 3 to 4 minutes — then flip them over.
Cook until brown on the other side, then transfer to a plate lined with paper towels to absorb any excess fat.
Serve with sour cream.
Or with garlic nuggets and sea salt.
And that’s it.
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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12 Comments
Those look fabulous. I have never put milk in my potato or zucchini pancakes. I will have to try this variation on the recipe. They are a beautiful golden color. The color must come from the bacon fat. Thanks for the recipe.
Those are really nice looking cakes! Good job, Drew! I love latkes.
I am making these for dinner tonight – vegan style!
Wow, these look really great! I really appreciate the pictures, it helps me so much…I’m not a natural cook by any means. I also really appreciate a recipe for zucchini, my step-mom gave me several and I didn’t know what to do with them. I normally don’t like zucchini very much when they are just in big slices but I really think I will like them this way.
We have some monster zucchini just like these in our garden. First time I’ve ever seen them like this…but then again, never grown them before. Cut and grilled on the bbq…tasted a bit like butternut squash.
I am going to try your recipe…especially since we have so much zucchini. Been giving it away to everyone we know.
Thanks for the recipe and the great blog.
Yum – zucchini latkes (or courgettes fritters, as we would call them over here!) are my favourite vegetables, bar onions/shallots. I use them in any way I can – I’m having them panfried this evening for dinner with steak and baked mushrooms but I like them in any incarnation – stuffed with turkey keema/rice/cous-cous, stir-fried, raw ribbons of it in a salad, courgette and bacon lasagne (yum yum yumm!) – the list is endless! These are one of my fave ways to do it – amazing. I urge you to try putting some feta in the mix and serving them with lamb chops and some roasted cherry toms – it is one of my fave ever meals!!
Am going to try this recipe tomorrow night with lamb chops – like CityShare, I don’t normally put milk in mine. Thanks!!
For some extra flavor…..try adding some crushed red pepper flakes to the mixture ( before frying)
Nothing better YUM
Latkes = fritter! OK. This sounds so delicious it has been added to my dinner plans.
Squash is so amazingly adaptable. I am overrun with it at the moment and am currently making sweet (pickle) squash relish, old fashioned fermented dill (pickle) squash pickles, bread and butter sweet (pickles) squash, soup and just plain ol’ canned squash. It makes a delicious (apple) cobbler dessert. No one even guessed it was squash although they should have known better! I can’t believe you have never seen one with seeds but if you don’t grow it you wouldn’t know about the radioactive mutant squash that seems to develop overnight if you miss even one!
I was raised on potato latkes, but this sounds like an awesome way to get some greens in. Can’t wait to try them!
Try this with sour cream and Bulldog sauce!
For those of you unfamiliar, it’s a tangy sweet “fruit sauce” used in Japan. Here’s a link to it on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Bull-Dog-Vegetable-Fruit-Sauce-Chuno/dp/B0002IZD16
Goes great with lots of things – I got the idea to use it on the latkes because our family usually uses it on Japanese or Korean “pancakes” (the latter of which involves tiny octopuses in the batter – yum!).
um, if you’re Jewish, use vegetable oil instead of bacon fat.
I’ve become adept at modifying your recipes that use bacon fat. LOL
Rachel, if I had to cook for anyone Jewish* I’d probably replace the bacon fat with schmaltz.
* I couldn’t cook true kosher since — as you know — I’d need all new pots, pans, knives, etc.