One of my favorite Turkish dishes is mucver, or zucchini pancakes, topped with a Turkish yogurt. Despite my feeling that one can probably never mess up mucver (I've had it at multiple restaurants with varying levels of overall quality), I hadn't really thought about making it at home until I saw this recipe on the NY Times website a few months ago. But even after seeing this fairly easy recipe, I didn't actually decide to plow forward and make it myself until I recently a HUGE zucchini from my CSA. I have tried a few other dishes with the CSA zucchini, including a spicy stir-fried zucchini and sliced zucchini on homemade pizza, but the massive size of the zucchini I received that week meant that it was time to get creative so to the mucver I turned.
Rather than follow the NY Times recipe which required a lot of ingredients that I didn't have and much more egg than I wanted ( I generally don't eat eggs unless they are in baked goods), I looked up a few other recipes and decided to just freestyle it with the following version:
1 medium large zucchini, shredded
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbls all-purpose flour
1 tbls panko breadcrumbs
1 green onion, finely chopped
crushed red pepper to taste
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 tsp baking soda
Olive oil for pan-frying (approx 3 tbls)
Directions
1. After shredding the zucchini, squeeze as much of the excess water out of the remains and pat the mixture as dry as possible.
2. Heat a heavy pan on high heat with olive oil for light pan-frying.
3. Mix all of the remaining ingredients together.
4. Place one large tablespoon of the mixture onto the pan, slightly flattening out to a 2 – 3-inch diameter with a spatula. Repeat, leaving an inch or two between each zucchini pancake round.
5. Cook for approximately 3 minutes on each side, until fairly browned.
6. Serve immediately with a Greek or Turkish style yogurt or freshed chopped dill, if you desire.
Although this recipe may not follow the true Turkish style of mucver, I found this recipe to be extremely quick, flexible and very tasty (not too eggy!), and look forward to trying other spices or cheeses with it as I happen to get them in my kitchen.
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