Chef Ofer’s Cauliflower Fritters

Since it’s still Chanukah time we have the opportunity for one more frying post (hey, I really don’t fry that often, I promise!). In any event, I needed to wait till the dust settled with the kids over and grandkids rampaging through the house (in a good way) and spending precious time together and supporting one another. Our son in law Eyal wasn’t with us nor was our grandson Lavi, both in the army and they were sorely missed. We hope to be all together again safe and soon.

This recipe was given to me by Chef Ofer Shitrit who was the chef in the summer for TourPlus, a wonderful tour company whom we’ve been with many times, headed by Dafna and Yaakov Cohen, who were incredibly attentive to the wants and needs of the crowd of guests and we truly had a marvelous vacation with them. I had a 45 minute lovely chat with the chef, who graciously gave me his time. He has a catering company, Chayuta and graduated from the famous school of Tadmor. He works both in Israel and abroad, cooking in a European style. I always ask the chefs I interview who were their inspiration and time and again they tell me their mothers! His mom was from Algiers and cooked French style food and this had an influence on him although he himself was born in Netanya, Israel. I was particularly taken with beef he’d made and asked for the recipe but he asked what style of cooking my readers liked and I said, depends but most want quick and easy recipes. He smiled at me and said the beef you loved has a stock which takes 24 hours to prepare. Ummm, k, I saw his point. Now you know I would be willing to try it but have mercy on my readers, uh uh, no no no. So he said I will give you my recipe for cauliflower fritters, it’s simple and despite that it’s amazingly tasty and so it is. It became an instant hit with us and it’s special flavor makes everyone delighted. One last tip for cooking in general, he uses a creative addition of spices to fresh local foods and cooking techniques to bring out the flavors. So on we go to the fritters!

Gather your ingredients.

Take a nice large head of cauliflower and break into florets.

Then take a pot large enough to hold the cauliflower easily and fill with water and salt with 2 teaspoons of salt. Bring to the boil. Boil exactly 8 minutes, no longer! Then drain cauliflower well.

While it’s draining, peel and chunk the potatoes and boil till soft enough to mash easily about 20 minutes (btw, you can simply skim out the cauliflower from the pot and use the same water for the potatoes). While the potatoes cook, take the cooked cauliflower and chop roughly like so:

you want to feel the cauliflower and it should be chunky. K. Set aside. Back to our potatoes. Drain and mash well.

Mashed potatoes

They needn’t be perfectly smooth but mostly.

Now in a nice sized bowl, place the eggs, flour and chopped up dill.

add the cauliflower and mashed potatoes.

add salt and pepper and stir stir stir till you have a nice thick mass like so:

Okay, a note here. I though it odd that there was no baking powder in the fritters so I tried it both with and without (I do my research for you!) and sure enough, with the baking powder, the texture was not as good, so don’t add any! Now as you see in the pic above, I scooped the batter into a scooper but that’s just me since I like the size of the fritters to be the same (they also fry more evenly that way) but you can either use your clean hands or two tablespoons to form into patties.

Heat the oil in a frying pan to medium high (too high and the insides will be raw and the outsides overdone) and carefully put the patties, with room between them in to shallow fry, not deep fry. Fry for about 4 minutes on each side or till a glorious brown and trust me, you won’t have time to drain them. Plates will be waiting on you, held out for their fritters. The addition of the dill is sheer genius on his part as it totally elevates the flavors.

Chef Ofer’s Cauliflower Fritters

1 large head of cauliflower, cleaned and broken into florets

2 peeled large potatoes

1/2 cup (80 grams) flour

2 eggs

1 teaspoon salt

pinch pepper (he uses white pepper which I find too sharp, I used black pepper)

small bunch fresh dill (do try for the fresh dill, it’s a wallop of flavor but if inaccessible, use the frozen chopped dill, 2 squares), cleaned and chopped

Oil for frying

Directions:

Bring water to boil with 2 teaspoons of salt and boil florets for 8 minutes exactly. Drain well. The cauliflower will still have some crunch to it and that’s correct. Chop the cauliflower coarsely and set aside. Peel the potatoes and cube and cook in salted water till fully soft. Mash potatoes well (it doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth, however). In a large bowl, place the flour, eggs, fresh chopped dill, add the mashed potatoes and chopped cauliflower, the salt and pepper and mix thoroughly. Batter will be chunky. Form patties and take a frying pan with oil to cover the bottom of the pan (add more as needed, just bring temperature back to frying heat) and heat oil to medium heat, frying fritters about 4 minutes on each side till deep golden brown. Drain and serve. Lovely with sour cream or maybe some horseradish, red or white for a change of pace.