
Aujord’hui, nous voyageons en France pour une recette que nous adorons.
Or “ en Anglais” today we voyage to France for a recipe which we adore. Alright, so I’m no good with written French. Luckily I could speak a little so living there for eight months wasn’t too bad. Whilst there, we made a meal of Bean fritters for some friends who commented that it was a typical French meal. We’d had no idea and had done it because it used what we had left, not that we let them know this, of course.
After a little research however, we found that it was derived from one of those traditional peasant meals that came about because people couldn’t always afford meat. A bigger bonus for us as the one complaint I could possibly have with the local cuisine is their idea of “vegetarian” We soon discovered that they thought, if you were vegetarian, it was ok to serve you ham, or chicken, or bacon, or fish, or cook everything in goose fat. Safe to say we did not go out to eat much.
Anyway I digress and you’ll all be wanting to know what the recipe is, right?
Ok, for the batter you’ll need:
125g plain flour
a pinch of salt
2 egg yolks
3 egg whites
150 ml milk
For the beans you’ll need:
1 can of beans, no, not “baked”. White kidney or Borlotti beans, anything like that.
Some parsley or coriander or other herb that you think’ll go, fresh or dried
The zest of 1 –2 limes or 1 lemon
A pinch of cayenne or chilli powder (optional)
Salt and pepper
Some oil for shallow frying
You’ll need to:
Sift the flour and the salt into a bowl and make a well in the middle. Put the egg yolks in the well and mix together. As you’re doing this, add the milk, a bit at a time, until you’ve got a smooth, relatively thick batter. Pop this in the fridge for about a half hour. Meanwhile, bung the beans, lime zest salt and pepper, herbs and cayenne into a bowl and mix, then mix into the batter. Now whisk the egg whites until you can put a spoon in it and lift it out, leaving a small peak of egg that mostly stays put. Fold this into the bean and batter mix, with a metal spoon.
Heat the oil and into it, place large spoonfuls of the mixture until the fritter is golden brown. Do this for the other side, then pop it on some kitchen towel to drain.
We serve these hot in a big bowl accompanied with salad etc. They seem to go down well with all our friends. Hopefully they will with you too!
Enjoy and bon appetit
Karen and Rich
(ps. Photo is Jacquou Le Croquant, peasent hero of Domme, excuse really poor photo :-)