This recipe uses a lot of greens. It also begs the question: if you fry an ingredient that’s generally considered good for you and then eat a lot of the finished product, are you actually eating junk food? Or is it healthy food?
We’re just going to ignore that whole issue since I really like eating these. If you’ve ever been overzealous in planting your swiss chard patch and ended up with ridiculous greens, this is one to bookmark.
Also, if you end up buying lots of greens at the farmers market because they’re pretty and you figure that you’ll deal with them later, also, if the farmers who grew your CSA box were overzealous in planting their swiss chard patch, and now you’re suffering the consequences.
When I made these last week, we had them as a side dish with jerk chicken, along with white nectarine salsa, purple cabbage slaw, and a garden salad.
I served them with a dipping sauce that was just homemade sriracha mixed with mayonnaise. You could also serve them as an appetizer, put them in a wrap (think: falafels) for a vegetarian lunch, and they’re even good cold out of the fridge.
There’s lots of room to experiment with seasonings, too. A little curry powder and they could go with your next Indian dinner, or some lemon juice and feta cheese could give them more of a greek flavor.
You could serve them with tomato sauce instead of sriracha-mayo or sweet chili sauce.
Dandelion Green Fritters Recipe
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Makes: I forgot to count them before we ate them all. It makes as many as there are in that picture up top. A big plate full.
Ingredients:
- 2 tbs. butter
- 2 big bunches of greens, roughly chopped: I used a mixture of swiss chard and dandelion greens, but anything you have is totally fine
- 2 large tomatoes, diced
- 2 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 4-5 eggs, beaten
- 1 tsp sea salt
- a pinch of black pepper
- safflower oil for frying, or any high-heat oil that you have
Heat the butter in a large skillet on medium-high heat. Add the chopped greens and tomatoes and saute, stirring often, until the greens are tender (how long totally depends on what kind of greens you use). Season this mixture with salt and pepper. Taste it to make sure it tastes good (you could almost serve this as is…)
Now, put the greens in a mixing bowl with flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper. Add the eggs a little bit at a time, stirring, until the mixture is about the consistency of pancake batter. If it’s too dry, add another egg or some milk. If it’s too wet, add some more flour (it should be pretty wet though).
Heat 1/4″ of oil into a large frying pan. Working in batches once the oil is hot, drop small spoonfuls of batter into the oil.
You’ll want to cook them for about a minute, then flip them over to cook the other side and cook for another minute or two. They should be a nice shade of fried-food-golden-brown when they’re done. Let them cool on a paper towel for a minute, then serve with whatever dipping sauce makes you happy.
One last thing: if you decide to make these with swiss chard, go ahead and put the stems in too, they taste great!
