Recipe: Veggie Pancakes

Ed and I unexpectedly threw together a delicious dinner last night, and I wanted to share. Like many of you, we’ve been overwhelmed with fresh vegetables each week from our Grant Family Farms CSA. We pick our box up on Monday afternoons, and last night we got two types of lettuce, red and golden beets, garlic scapes, summer squash, zucchini, green onions, English peas, and mushrooms. Not to mention the fresh whole grain bread, eggs from pastured chickens, and a huge bag of apricots!

I told Ed I would handle the vegetable if he picked up some sort of fish or meat from Whole Foods on his way home from work. I suggested a bag of frozen shrimp, because it’s easy, cheaper than fresh fish, and one bag lasts us at least two meals. Meanwhile, I pulled up the weekly e-mail we receive from the farm with suggested recipes. They had one for “Vegetable Fritters” (compliments of Simply in Season cookbook) that sounded pretty good, so I adapted it a bit and gave it a try.

*I apologize for my fuzzy iPhone photos, I was too lazy to run upstairs and get our real camera!

I am calling these veggie pancakes because they look exactly like pancakes and I don’t really like calling my food “fritters.” But either way, they turned out much better than expected and I think they’re a great way to use a lot of vegetables at one time. I’ve changed some of the proportions because when I made it, it had too much flour/egg mixture compared to the amount of veggies. But, feel free to adjust as needed.

Recipe (adapted from Vegetable Fritter recipe from Simply in Season)

1/3 cup whole wheat flour

2 fresh eggs

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp sea salt

½ tsp ground pepper

3-4 cups of diced, minced, chopped or shredded veggies: zucchini, summer squash, mushrooms, garlic, peas, carrots, beets, green beans, onions, etc.

2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

Beat eggs and combine with flour, baking powder, sea salt and pepper. Fold the 3-4 cups of prepared vegetables into the egg & flour mixture. Heat frying pan with oil (I used coconut oil) and spoon batter onto hot pan as if you were making pancakes. Make these as large or small as you want. Heat on both sides until crispy, then serve.

We served these over a bed of lettuce with some shrimp and homemade salad dressing. It was really a great dinner – full of vegetables, not too filling, but very satisfying. I even ate the leftovers for breakfast today with a hard-boiled egg (topped with gray sea salt). I think these would be delicious if you made them into tiny little patties to put on top of salads, and kids may even like them too. It’s worth a try! Enjoy!