Quick(er) Zucchini and Potato Fritters

Juggling work and the daycare drop-off is tiring, and when I get home I'm less than inspired to cook. I have tried saving myself some hassle by ordering a vegetable box online, but was really disappointed with the first one I tried. Even though it's the middle of summer, I was given loads of potatoes, onions, and carrots, and only small amounts of interesting veg. (What do you do with eight mushrooms? EIGHT!)

Amongst my kilogram of potatoes was a single zucchini. What to do, what to do... fritters! But I couldn't face cooking the potatoes, mashing them, etc etc. And I vaguely recalled totally failing to make a swiss dish involving frying raw potatoes. So I figured someone else must have gone through this before. And someone had! So here's something loosely based on their ideas -- the main thing to mimic was thoroughly squeezing the liquid out of the potato (not so much the zucchini, surprisingly) before you start.

Ingredients

• 2 medium potatoes
• 1 zucchini
• 4 spring onions
• 50-75g feta cheese
• 1-2 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp paprika
• a handful of finely-chopped herbs, especially mint and parsley
• 1 egg, lightly beaten

Grate the potatoes using a tower grater. Put in a colander or sieve and squeeze the liquid out: I find using my hands is the best way to do it. Shred the zucchini in the same way. Finely dice the spring onions and crumble the feta cheese. Combine all of the ingredients in a mixing bowl. Fry dollops of the mixture in olive oil, pushing down with a spatula to make them no more than 1cm thick, so the potato cooks well; fry 3-4 minutes each side, until golden and cooked through.

Carrot and Apple Salad

Somehow we ended up with a couple of kilograms of carrots and apples hanging around the fridge, and I remembered this classic salad combination. It's fast, fresh, crunchy, and it even keeps for a week in the fridge. I also like it in a sandwich, particularly with blue cheese, although I imagine cheddar would work well, too.

Ingredients

• 2-3 tbsp sesame seeds
• 4 carrots
• 1-2 sharp apples
• a handful of raisins
• juice of half a lemon
• 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tbsp olive oil

Dry-fry the sesame seeds until they are golden and fragrant. Shred the carrots using a tower grater. You can shred the apple too, but I prefer it finely diced or julienned, and find the salad is less soggy that way. Combine the lemon juice, vinegar, sugar, salt and olive oil, and crush in the garlic clove, then whisk together until emulsified. Toss the carrots, apples, raisins, sesame seeds and dressing together; serve cold or at room temperature.