Spicy chicken nuggets and broccoli fritters

Until recently, fritters fell into that category of food that I really liked but had never cooked.  I used to be a bit scared of batter, after some lumpy, undercooked messes, so perhaps I'd just decided to keep clear of it.

I found this offering from Smitten Kitchen a little while back and tried it out, but the batter recipe really didn't work for me: it came out with a texture more like something you'd use to stick runs of bricks on top of each other and although the resulting fritters were tasty they were not at all photogenic, with great lumps of pancake amongst them.

I felt that the batter needed some liquid and did a bit of google research to  see what other people recommended.  Most of the recipes I found were near enough identical to the Smitten Kitchen one, but I found just a couple of dissenters - it is apparently acceptable to add either fizzy water or milk to your batter.  I settled on milk, because there was some in the fridge already..

It's worth preparing this in advance and giving yourself plenty of time over it.  I managed to watch an episode of Star Trek while this was in progress and didn't miss a thing.

First of all, cook your broccoli.  Steaming it for about 10-15 minutes will get it edible but still with plenty of crunch intact.  You don't want it to turn to mush.  Whenever I cook broccoli I'm reminded of my Grandma and her group of friends sending the veg back at a Christmas dinner in a restaurant because the veg wasn't cooked enough - that's how you want it!

Once it's cooked, take it off the heat and let it cool.  Meanwhile, make the batter.  I don't know why I was so scared of batter before, it's a piece of cake - perhaps because I've finally bought an electric whisk?  As a tenant, I've often had tiny little kitchens so I tend to resist buying unnecessary kitchen gadgets but my whisk cost about a fiver and takes up very little space.

So: put 80g flour, 30ml milk, a good pinch of salt, a glug of olive oil, a pinch of chilli flakes or cayenne pepper, a splash of Tabasco (or chilli sauce of your choosing) and an egg into a bowl and whisk until all the flour has been absorbed.  It'll still be very firm - closer to a solid than a liquid pancake batter - but that splash of milk is just enough to make it a batter rather than a putty.

Roughly chop up the steamed broccoli, finely chop an onion and a clove of garlic, and add them to the batter.  Stir it all up together and put the bowl away in the fridge until you're ready to cook.

When you're ready to eat, crack on with the chicken.  This is easy peasy - just cut a couple of chicken breasts into bitesize chunks, then dip into flour, egg and breadcrumbs containing whatever flavourings you want.  I've gone for sesame seeds, chilli flakes and coriander today.

Get the chicken chunks cooking in hot oil, then form the broccoli batter into equally sized cakes and fry those too.  It'll take about ten minutes, turning once.

It has to be said, the presentation makes for something that we really don't like - beige food.  It really needed something like a tomato salad just to lift the colours on the plate.  It could have done with some sort of sauce or dressing too - my girlfriend had tomato ketchup (which I can't stand) but some sort of cool, minty yoghurt sauce might have worked well.

It tasted good though, and really spicy.  These were big portions, too - one chicken breast between two people would have been enough.