Recipe: Vegetable Fritters (Öcce) from Karsu’s Turkish Kitchen
In her cookbook Karsu’s Kitchen, Karsu Dönmez takes you into her life and the dishes that are part of it. The book will be available in stores on 7 March. We may give you a sneak preview. And believe us: it is delicious!
In Karsu’s Kitchen, you will find 75 of her favorite recipes from Turkish cuisine. You will embark on a culinary dream journey from tables laden with mezze to simple, quick meals, from vegetarian dishes to fish and meat. The book is also full of personal stories about her culinary journey from Istanbul to Hatay (a UNESCO Culinary World Heritage region in Turkey). Karsu first ate these delicious vegetable fritters, or öcce, when she went to Efteling for the day with her family.
‘Day at Efteling’
Karsu: ‘There was a time when my parents really didn’t have much money. I experienced that very consciously as a teenager. Perhaps I was ashamed of it at the time, but now I am actually very grateful that I got to experience it. I understand the value of things much better now and I manage perfectly well with limited financial resources. I therefore rarely really thought that we had little money to spend. Although I can still clearly remember that afternoon at Efteling. Mum had got tickets with discount coupons from the supermarket, but she didn’t have a few extra euros to buy fries there. To spare us that painful moment, she told us that we had been chosen to have a picnic at Efteling, so we sat down with a blanket we had brought ourselves in the middle of a patch of grass between the attractions. She took out a box of öcce that she had prepared that same morning. I will never forget that taste; it was so delicious that it made me forget that we ourselves looked like an attraction. Whatever! We had Mum’s delicious öcce, much better than Efteling’s fries! Haha.’
How to make öcce (Vegetable Fritters)
- Grate the courgettes into a bowl. Add a little salt and leave to stand for at least 15 minutes. Then squeeze out the moisture with your hands. Coarsely grind the pepper, onion and parsley in a food processor. Put everything in a bowl and add the eggs. Then add the flour, pul biber and salt and mix into a batter.
- Heat a 2 cm layer of peanut oil in a large frying pan. Use a tablespoon to shape cookies from the batter and fry them in the oil until golden brown on both sides. Drain the vegetable fritters on kitchen paper. Repeat until all the batter has been used.
Title: Karsu’s Kitchen
Author: Karsu Dönmez
Price: €34.99
Publisher: Kosmos Uitgevers
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