Thursday, January 29, 2009

Event 1

I’m hosting my first event. This is just to get myself back into blogging, as my commitment to this blog over the past year has been quite abysmal! The topic I’ve chosen is ‘Eggless Fritters’ because most of the hits to this blog have been through people googling these two words! The fact that this blog appears as the first or second search result in reality means that there are either a lack of blogs having recipes for these fritters, or that my fellow bloggers have given their fritter recipes too specific names which don’t appear in a simple search. Plus, a search for ‘vegetarian fritters’ usually returns with fritter recipes containing egg. I have yet to find one blog which has a collection of eggless fritter recipes, so why not start one myself? Anyway, Wikipedia defines a fritter as being ‘any kind of food coated in batter and deep fried’. I’ll agree with the first half of the definition, but I think I’ll experiment with the deep frying bit! If I can get away with shallow frying or even baking I’ll give it a go!!

So why are fritters so popular? Because they are so easy to make, so comforting and so versatile! Fritters can be used in a entrĂ©e, as a side dish or as in my case, when guests pop around. They can be made with almost anything [vegetarian in our case] and you can always experiment with the type of batter you make. Most fritter recipes contain egg as the binding ingredient, so I’ve always tried experimenting using different ingredients to serve the same purpose. In most of the recipes I’ll be showcasing, I’ll be using 1 of 4 of the following types of batters:
1. Besan [chickpea flour] and spices [chilli powder, turmeric, salt, asafoetida, cumin seeds, ginger garlic paste]
2. Breadcrumbs
3. Flour: Rice flour, cornflour or Self raising flour
4. Cornflakes/Polenta [haven’t tried this yet…hopefully it works!]

I encourage anyone that wants to contribute to this event do so. Your recipes can be of any types of fritters and from anywhere around the world …be innovative! The only condition is that they must be eggless!

I hope you enjoy this collection!