Ingredients
- scant 2/3 cup chickpea (besan or gram) flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 tablespoon ground coriander
- 1 egg yolk, whisked
- 1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1/2 cup soda water
- 3 medium zucchini, cut into thin 1/2-inch sticks
- 1 tablespoon table salt
- generous 2–3 cups vegetable oil, for frying
- 1-1/2 tablespoons za’atar
Directions
1. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, pepper, and coriander in a large bowl. Drizzle the egg yolk and the 1/2 tablespoon of oil into the bowl and use a fork to create a craggy dough. Slowly pour in the soda water, whisking continuously until a smooth batter forms. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour.
2. When you are ready to fry the frites, heat the oil for frying in a large saucepan until it reaches 375 degrees F on a cooking thermometer. If you don’t have a thermometer, the oil is ready when a cube of bread dropped into it browns in 30 seconds.
3. Take a handful of zucchini sticks, drop them into the batter, and make sure they’re well coated. Use tongs to gently lower them into the hot oil and fry them until they’re golden — about 4 minutes. Remove them from the oil with a slotted spoon and drain them on paper towels. Let the oil return to 375 F and repeat the process with the remaining sticks and batter.
4. Sprinkle the frites with the salt and za’atar before serving. If you fancy a condiment, then plain yogurt muddled with some olive oil and lemon juice works well.
More from Cut the Carbs:
• Blue Cheese Soufflés Recipe
• Shrimp and Quinoa Grits Recipe
Reprinted with permission from Cut the Carbs: 100 Recipes to Help You Ditch White Carbs and Feel Great by Tori Haschka, published by The Countryman Press, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2016.
While there is no end to the difficulty of avoiding white carbs, consuming them too often and too heavily can make you feel sluggish, uncomfortable, and hungry again much too soon. This is what Tori Haschka discovered, and so she turned to experimentation with recipes and ingredients from all over the world that could be used to satisfy and replace her white-carb craving. In Cut the Carbs (The Countryman Press, 2016), Haschka shares 100 of the healthy and delicious ideas — from breakfast to snack foods to dinner — that she’s cooked up. Resulting in more energy, better skin, and a more stable weight, Haschka’s recipes will encourage you to stop relying on nutrient-poor mealtimes and bring new life to your dinner table.
You can get lofty and call them frites but really, fries are fries. They’re slivers of vegetable, cooked in oil until crisp, then seasoned and consumed — often by the fistful. They’re what you want as a side to a steak. They’re perfect dabbed in mustard alongside a roast chicken. And they shouldn’t be constrained to starches. These frites are a little lighter than their potato-based cousin. Zucchini offer a yielding center while the chickpea flour and soda water in the batter crisp up beautifully. Granted, these are not everyday food, so treat them as an exotic visitor and dust them in za’atar, a blend of oregano, thyme, and sesame. Spritz them with lemon. Maybe dip them in yogurt and sesame seed paste. Then savor every hot, salty bite.
