Iranian Herb Fritter Recipe - Great British Chefs

Brunch
easy
Makes 8
45 minutes

PT45M

This wonderful Iranian herb fritter recipe is served with a vibrant parsley tahini sauce – a sublime brunch or snack dish that is great for using up copious amounts of herbs. This recipe was taken from SIMPLE by Yotam Ottolenghi, published by Ebury Press. Images by Jonathan Lovekin.

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These can be snacked on as they are, at room temperature, or else served with a green tahini sauce and some extra herbs. This sauce is lovely spooned over all sorts of things – grilled meat and fish and roasted vegetables, for example – so double or triple the batch and keep it in the fridge. It keeps well for about 5 days. You might want to thin it with a little water or lemon juice to get it back to the right consistency.

These fritters are a bit of a fridge raid, using up whatever herbs you have around. As long as you keep the total net weight the same and use a mixture of herbs, this will still work wonderfully. The batter will keep, uncooked, for 1 day in the fridge.

Alternatively, pile the fritters into pitta bread with condiments: a combination of yoghurt, chilli sauce, pickled vegetables and tahini works well. You’d just need one fritter per person, rather than two.

Ingredients

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Iranian herb fritters
40g of dill, finely chopped
40g of basil, finely chopped
40g of coriander leaves, finely chopped
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
50g of fresh breadcrumbs, (about 2 slices, crusts left on if soft)
3 tbsp of barberries, (or currants)
25g of walnut halves, lightly toasted and roughly chopped
8 large eggs, beaten
60ml of sunflower oil, for frying
salt
Parsley and tahini sauce (optional)
50g of tahini
30g of parsley
1/2 garlic clove, crushed
2 tbsp of lemon juice
1/8 tsp salt
125ml of water

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Method

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If you want to make the tahini sauce, just blitz together the tahini, parsley, crushed garlic clove, lemon juice and salt for 30 seconds, then pour in 125ml water. Holding back on the water allows the parsley to get really broken up and turns the sauce as green as can be

Place all the ingredients, apart from the oil, in a large bowl with 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Mix well to combine and set aside

Put 2 tablespoons of oil into a large non-stick pan and place on a medium high heat. Once hot, add ladles of batter to the pan. Do 4 fritters at a time, if you can – you want each of them to be about 12cm wide – otherwise just do 2 or 3 at a time. Fry for 1–2 minutes on each side, until crisp and golden-brown. Transfer to a kitchen paper-lined plate and set aside while you continue with the remaining batter and oil

Serve either warm or at room temperature

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