What We’re Cooking This Week: Zucchini Fritters With Tinned Fish

“Top Chef” star Hauman’s Tiny Fish Co. uses less-popular Pacific Northwest seafood in her line products, and she packs them in flavorful sauces.

Zucchini Fritters with Tinned Fish Photo by Jim Dixon.

Jim Dixon wrote about food for WW for more than 20 years, but these days most of his time is spent at his olive oil-focused specialty food business Wellspent Market. Jim’s always loved to eat, and he encourages his customers to cook by sending them recipes every week through his newsletter. We’re happy to have him back creating some special dishes just for WW readers.

I watched chef Sara Hauman make a version of the round, octopus-filled fritters called takoyaki using a waffle iron and her own Tiny Fish tinned octopus and had a lightbulb moment: I can add tinned fish to the vegetable fritters that are on regular rotation in my kitchen.

Top Chef star Hauman’s Tiny Fish Co. uses less-popular Pacific Northwest seafood such as octopus, geoduck, mussels and rockfish in her line products, and she packs them in flavorful sauces. The geoduck gets a smoky-sweet balck pepper treatment, and the octopus swims in a buttery, dill-flavored bath. For my fritters, I went with her rockfish in sweet soy.

And while okonomiyaki, the takoyaki-adjacent Japanese pancakes, combine shredded cabbage with a flour and dashi batter, I wanted a more delicate flavor to highlight the fish. So I made simple zucchini fritters with a mix of flour and panko breadcrumbs to help hold everything together and maximize the crispy quotient. To stick with the Japanese theme, I drizzled mine with Kewpie mayo and sprinkled them with the spicy sesame seed mix called furikake, but they’d be just as good with a little ketchup.

Zucchini Fritters with Tinned Fish Photo by Jim Dixon.

Zucchini Fritters with Tinned Fish

2 roughly 6-inch long zucchinis

1 golf ball-sized shallot, finely chopped

2 eggs

1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup panko

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 tin Tiny Fish Co. rockfish in sweet soy sauce

Extra-virgin olive oil for frying

Use the large holes of a box grater to grate the zucchini. Put it in a colander, toss with a good pinch of salt, and set the colander over a bowl. After 10-15 minutes, use your hands to squeeze as much moisture out of the grated squash as possible. Discard the liquid.

Mix together the grated zucchini, chopped shallot, eggs, flour, panko, salt and the can of rockfish and its sauce. Heat a skillet over medium and add a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Use a spoon to drop roughly 1/4 cup of the mixture into the skillet, smoothing and shaping each fritter into a 2-3 inch circle. Cook 3 or 4 at a time so they aren’t crowded.

After 3-4 minutes, check the first fritter to see it’s nicely browned. If so, gently flip and cook the other side. Set the cooked fritters on a plate and, if desired, keep them warm in a low oven. Continue to cook, adding more oil to the skillet as needed. Serve hot with Kewpie mayo and furikake or your favorite fritter condiment. If there are any leftovers, heat them under the broiler with a slice of melty American cheese and put them on burger buns.

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