greek cheese and potato patties

About two weeks ago, I was preparing to donate blood for the first time. I was nervous, so I was just trying to do everything that I was told--drink lots of water, eat a hearty breakfast the day of, and intake lots of iron in the days leading up to the donation. I do the first two on most days anyways, so I began focusing on the third one, especially since I know vegetarians can sometimes have difficulty keeping their iron levels up. Every day the week before I donated blood, I made sure I ate something that contained spinach. 

Therefore, when I found the following recipe, another one from The Best-Ever Vegetarian Cookbook, I decided to add spinach and see what happened. 

the recipe

serves 4

1 1/4 lb potatoes

4 oz feta cheese

4 spring onions, chopped

3 tbsp chopped fresh dill

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 egg, beaten

flour for dredging

3 tbsp olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Boil the potatoes in their skins in lightly salted water until soft. Drain, then peel while still warm. Place in a bowl and mash. Crumble the feta cheese into the potatoes and add the spring onions, dill, lemon juice and egg. Season with salt and pepper (the cheese is salty, so taste before you add salt). Stir well.

2. Cover the mixture and chill until firm. Divide the mixture into walnut-size balls, then flatten them slightly. Dredge with the flour. Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the patties until golden brown on each side. Drain on kitchen paper and serve at once.

substitutions

Honestly, I'm not even sure where to begin. I only had one potato, so that made things interesting right from the beginning. I added spinach--not sure exactly how much, I just broke off part of a block of frozen spinach. Since I didn't have enough potatoes, I added a little bit of flour to help with the consistency, since I was noticed that mine was clearly too runny. And I know this is going to sound ridiculous--probably because it really is ridiculous--but my family has a strange vendetta against dill that's a little hard to explain. Anyways, I ditched that particular seasoning and went with some oregano and pepper instead. As you can tell, there was a certain point where I just started ignoring the cookbook and basically started doing whatever I wanted.

great with

If I'm remembering correctly, I had some of this with a Morningstar Farms Chicken Pattie one night. I had the leftovers another night with just a salad. Both dinners were good.

the review

So this is one of those recipes that, once I got into it and realized just how much of the recipe I was not following, I was sure it was going to taste awful once I was done. I was surprised. These didn't taste awful. In fact, they tasted pretty good. I really liked being able to taste the lemon juice, although it was subtle. I also usually love anything with feta in it. Overall, the taste reminded me of something that I've had before, but can't quite place. Perhaps a spinach souffle (but only because I added spinach--I have no idea what it would taste like otherwise). Anyways, I look forward to making these again, hopefully with a little less stress.

And maybe I'll get over that thing with the dill. We'll see.