Buckwheat & zucchini fritters with tomato salsa | vegan

I've been eating buckwheat ever since I remember. I am a Lithuanian and there it's really common to eat buckwheat, at least it used to be while I was a kid. When I moved to Finland, not that many people actually knew or have tried it, I even struggled finding it at stores at first, which was really surprising to me.

Since I started eating vegan food, I started reading more about different beans, grains, etc. to just educate myself. I found out that buckwheat is actually a really great product containing a lot of important nutrients and loads of fiber.

Apparently, all my life I've been eating a super-food! So go ahead and join me! These fritters are really delicious and definitely worth a try!

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Servings: 4-5 Preparation: 30 min Cooking: 30 min

Ingredients for the salsa:

1 medium onion

1 jalapeno pepper (seeds removed)

3 cloves garlic

1 can (400 g) tomato crush

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 Tbsp red wine vinegar

Ingredients for the fritters:

1 cup buckwheat + 1 tsp salt

1 medium zucchini (about 480 g)

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp coriander powder

2 Tbsp ground flax seed (optional)

1 Tbsp dried oregano

1/2 Tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp Sriracha sauce

1 cup all-purpose flour*

Vegetable oil for frying

*You could replace this with buckwheat flour to make this recipe gluten-free.

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Preparation of the salsa:

1. Finely chop the onion and the jalapeno pepper. Crush or finely chop the garlic.

2. Heat up a small pan on high heat. Place the onion and garlic in it. Fry until it gets softer. Add the jalapeno pepper. Fry for another minute.

3. Add the tomato crush, salt, pepper and vinegar. Fry for about 5 min, mixing it once in a while.

4. Remove from heat and set it aside.

Preparation of the fritters:

1. Boil the buckwheat for 20 min in salted water (1 tsp salt).

2. Grate the zucchini. Spread a clean kitchen towel on a flat surface, spread the grated zucchini and cover with another kitchen towel and pat lightly. Leave it like that for 10 min so the zucchini becomes less watery.

3. Take a large bowl, put in the boiled buckwheat, zucchini and all the rest of the ingredients except the vegetable oil. Mix everything really well.

4. Heat up a large pan with vegetable oil on high heat. Take some mixture in your hand, shape into a ball and place it in the pan. The mixture doesn't have much flour, so it will be quite loose at first. For us it lost the ball shape, but we were able to fry it nicely on 3 sides as it shaped into this strange shape. You can also make them flat, more like pancakes if you want, it would be a bit easier to fry. Fry them for about 5 min per piece or until really brown and crispy on each side.

5. Serve hot with the tomato salsa.

#recipe #buckwheat #fritters #zucchini #vegan #plantbased