Salad Fritters - aka you can win friends with salad

So.

The last time I blogged a recipe, it was 2014 and a completely different blog.

Since then, I’ve written a book called MANDALAY: Recipes & Tales from a Burmese Kitchen (Bloomsbury Absolute) which was chosen by the Observer, the Financial Times, and the Mail on Sunday as one of their Best Books of 2019, and was described by Nigella Lawson as ‘a really loving and hungry-making introduction to a fascinating cuisine’ and by Tom Parker-Bowles as ‘a glorious revelation . . . autobiography, history and recipes all rolled into one magnificent whole . . . a brilliant, beguiling book’.

Okay, bragging over.

We’re all in the same state of shitty lockdown right now and we’re all in “make do and mend” mode, so let’s give you some recipes.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll often have a bag of leftover, limp salad leaves knocking around your fridge.

Please don’t let those leaves turn to mulch before forlornly throwing them away.

Make these babies instead - (leftover) salad fritters - yes, I’m going to teach you how to fry salad!

I’ve made them using a Burmese-style batter, so in Burmese you would call them Salat Ywet Kyaw (Salad Leaf Fritters).

SALAD FRITTERS

Serves 4

Ingredients

🥗6 tbsp plain/all-purpose flour
🥗3 tbsp glutinous rice flour (or cornflour or potato starch)
🥗1/2 tsp baking power
🥗1/2 tsp ground turmeric
🥗1/2 onion (about 80g), sliced
🥗100g any old salad leaves eg baby spinach, lambs lettuce, watercress or a mix
🥗2 spring onions/scallions (green and white parts), trimmed and chopped
🥗100ml water
🥗Seasoning (salt, pepper, MSG)

Roughly chop or rip up the salad leaves and mix them with the rest of the ingredients in a bowl. Leave to rest for 15 minutes maximum.

Heat 6cm of oil in a wok or saucepan on medium-high.

When you can feel the waves of heat coming off the top with the palm of your hand, deep-fry one tablespoonful of salad mixture at a time.

Fry each fritter for 3 minutes, then flip and fry the other side for 3 minutes.

Do not crowd the pan - do a maximum of 5 fritters at a time.

Drain each batch of fritters in a sieve/colander and at the end, gently tip all of the fritters back in the hot oil for another 5 minutes so they become golden at the edges and gain some extra crunch.

Drain them on kitchen paper and eat your salad fritters immediately with chilli sauce, salsa, ketchup, or some kind of spicy-sour sauce.

I personally like to eat them with the Burmese sauce Chin-Ngan-Sat (Sour, Salty, Hot) which is basically a mix of pickled ginger, soy sauce, lime, chilli and coriander to your own taste.

Like all fritters, these are great as a snack or starter, but they also go well as a side with rice and curries.