Summer Vegetable Pancakes with Basil Cream

I am excited to get back to blogging my recipes and my restaurant adventures.  I have several recipes in the pipeline, but I'm going to post them out of order.  I just made this recipe for the first time the other night, but it was requested, so I'm writing this one first.  More to come.

To begin with, I was looking for something that would suit a gluten-free diet.  I first turned to my handy Pinterest board and found many recipes I have been wanting to try.  Almost none of them gluten-free.  Something about this recipe kept drawing me to it.  I ended up changing a bunch of things and modifying it to be gluten-free.  This recipe is adapted from Epicurious. 

Here are some notes to kep in mind:
1.  Feel free to use whatever flour you want.  AP flour, whole wheat flour, oat, or almond should all work fine.
2.  I chose to take the step of whipping the egg whites (I love my Kitchen Aid stand mixer!) but if you don't feel like doing that, I'm pretty sure this would work by just mixing in one whole egg (instead of two egg whites.)  The texture should not be too much different, perhaps a little less light.

Mmm... basil chive cream

3.  I served these with a basil and chive cream (recipe below) but you could sub sour cream for the yogurt and you could swap out herbs to whatever you have handy, or whatever sounds delicious.  I recommend dill or tarragon.  Change the herbs in the pancakes to coordinate.  Also, you could spice these up by adding jalapenos or putting chipotle peppers in the cream.  Enjoy!

Ingredients  (makes about 12 pancakes)
For the cream

• 3/4 cup non-fat plain greek yogurt
• 1/4 cup fresh basil leaves
• 2 Tbl. fresh chopped chives
• salt to taste

For the pancakes

• 2 small to medium zucchini, grated
• 2 carrots, grated
• 1 tsp. salt
• one small onion diced
• 1/4 cup almond flour
• 1/2 tbl. Italian Seasoning
• 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
• 2 egg whites
• olive oil, for frying
• kosher salt for seasoning

Directions
Grate the zucchini and carrots into a colander.  Toss with the 1 tsp. salt and let drain for about 20 minutes.  Remove from colander and squeeze and excess liquid from the veggies.
While your veggies are draining, make the cream.  Mix greek yogurt with roughly chopped basil leaves and chives.  (Be careful chopping basil.  If your knife is not very sharp, you will bruise the basil and it won't have as nice of flavor.  You could tear the basil if you're concerned.  Otherwise, don't really worry about it that much.  Bruised basil is fine in this application.)  Stir.  Add salt to taste.   

Added egg whites.

Also, while you're waiting for the veggies to drain, you can whip your egg whites.

Next, in a large bowl combine flour, Italian Seasoning, and black pepper.  Add chopped onion.  Add the drained and squeezed veggies.  Mix to coat everything.  Fold in whipped egg whites.  (Don't worry about preserving volume, just mix everything thoroughly.  You don't want patches of plain egg in your pancakes.  Also, you could just mix in your one whole egg.)  Make sure everything is well combined.

All mixed in.

Heat Olive Oil in a pan.  Make sure the oil glides smoothly across the pan.  You want to oil good and hot.  I set the stove around medium-high.  But you know your stove better than I do.  Adjust temp as needed.  

Here they are mooshed in the pan.

Scoop pancake mixture into the pan with a 1/4 cup measure (not overflowing or you'll have fewer pancakes.  Which is fine if that doesn't bother you, or you want bigger cakes.  You'll just have to cook them a little longer.)  Moosh the cake mixture flat with the back of your scoop.  Fry about 3 minutes each side until they are nice and brown.  Remove from pan onto a paper towel to de-grease.  IMPORTANT:  Sprinkle a little kosher salt on the fried patties right away after removing from the pan.  Fried foods must be seasoned IMMEDIATELY!

Here they are nice a crispy brown.

Add additional oil to the pan as needed to fry the rest of your mix.

Serve hot and crispy, or room temperature with a dollop of the cream.  Enjoy.