Beet and Shrimp Fritters

Fritters are one of my favorite foods of all time because they're quick, fried, and can be made with almost any ingredients.

For these I used approximately:
1 cup chopped precooked shrimp (damn you Weshop!)
1 beet, washed, peeled and shredded
1/4 cup shredded cauliflower
3 eggs ( I wouldn't add this many if it wasn't Passover and I could use flour to bind then together)
1/4 cup matza meal (I'd usually use flour, but the matza meal ended up working pretty well)
1/4 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste

This made seven decent sized fritters

Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl, and let sit for 5 minutes. Take a small handful of the mixture and squeeze into a patty. If it doesn't easily stick together, add more matza meal ( or flour)

Heat around half an inch of oil in a pan. I recommend something like canola or peanut oil. Place one patty into the oil. Its always important to do a test patty when you're making up you're own recipe in order to make sure it sticks together. Assuming it does, add as many and can fit, and cook for around 5 minutes on each side. I don't usually check the temperature of the oil, but it should be hot enough to form a nice crust, but not burn the outside during the 5 minutes its submerged.




I made a dipping sauce out of mayo, mustard, and relish

Shrimp and Gnocci and Spinach, Oh My!

The People Who Ate It:

Every once in awhile I like to schedule one-on-ones with my friends so that we can put all the group dynamics aside and legitimately catch up. Tonight was my date with Grace! Unfortunately, the odds have been stacked against this meeting...we had already rescheduled once and then tonight we only had about an hour of mutual free time. Why are we all so busy? The answer to that question is far beyond the scope of this blog and will probably take years and years of therapy to get down to the bottom of. For now, lets just say that I am happy that my date with Grace worked out.


The Food:
Because of the aforementioned time crunch, we had a very quick dinner. It it is proof that the taste of a bunch of things thrown together is greater than the sum of their parts. The stuff that was thrown in were some prepackaged basil gnocci, shrimp, and a French variety of spinach that is a brilliant purple color. Grace dressed the whole thing up with a marinade made from honey, sumac, chili powder and some other things (Grace, if you see this you should add a clarifying comment to this post!) before we stuck the shrimp and spinach in a 450 degree oven together. Sure it would have been better if we had made the gnocci and all, but it was a perfect meal to catch up over.
We ended the meal with a marvelous chocolate cake that Grace made. More on that later.

Paella Risotto and Turkey Empanadas

Tonight we had a pretty large group for dinner, so we decided to go with something quick and easy- risotto. It ended up not being as quick as we thought.

We decided to make a paella inspired risotto since we were looking to incorporate shrimp, one of the few meat options that was acceptable to everyone coming.



To make it we first heated some oil in a pot with saffron, chili powder, paprika, onion and garlic and added Arborio rice to get it lightly toasted. We then slowly added watered down vegetable broth eventually with some peas, cherry tomatoes and the shrimp (unfortunately only precooked is available at Weshop), until all the broth had been added and the rice became soft and gooey. The box told us that this would take around 15 minutes total, which we knew was a lie. What we didn't expect is that it would actually take around an hour.



As an appetizer Xiaoxi made some turkey empanadas, and for dessert we began to work on the Zgougou I made last night. But there's plenty left, so its not too late and come have some for yourself!

Shrimp and black beans

Still living off of our Whole Foods purchases, tonight we decided to make shrimp. The only two ingredients we had decided upon were shrimp and black beans, so I challenged us to do something non- Mexican influenced with them. We both went off to our computers to look for other ideas. The majority of the food names we found online were Mexican related, but they just sounded so delicious that we couldn't resist and swung back in that direction.



We cooked the shrimp in one pan with lime zest, and in another mixed together the black beans, a tomato and a green pepper. We then squeezed the lime that we had zested over the top of the completed bowl.


Our shrimp had not been preshelled but I learned that the shrimp shell can be eaten, and also that it contains Chondroitin, an enzyme which is important for joint health. The shell supposedly also helps lower cholesterol levels.

We unfortunately didn't get a picture of the people who at it, who were Sarah, Julia and me.