Prawn and Sweet Potato Fritters ('Ukoy')

We had a sad sweet potato hanging around in the cupboard that I wanted to use up. This recipe turned out to be a stunningly inefficient way to do that, but made totally delicious and great finger food. You could eat them as a starters, but we just made 25 or so and chowed down while watching a movie :)

Ingredient:

• 250ml boiling water
• 250g raw small prawns
• 150g plain flour
• 80g ground rice
• 30g cornflour
• 2 eggs
• black pepper
• 125g peeled and grated sweet potato
• 115g bean sprouts
• 4 spring onions, finely sliced
• 1 small garlic clove
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp mild vinegar

Cook the prawns in the boiling water (in a saucepan, presumably) for 3-4 minutes, until pink and just cooked. Drain, reserving the prawn stock and leaving both prawns and stock to cool for ten minutes or so. Pluck the heads off, and if the shells are tough (i.e. if you couldn't find really small prawns), shell them completely.

Put the flours and ground rice into a bowl and whisk in the eggs and the cooled prawn liquid; season well with black pepper and salt. Add the grated sweet potato, bean sprouts and spring onions, and fold gently to combine. Drop 1 to 1 1/2 tbsp of batter into a frying pan of hot oil, and top with 2-3 prawns, pushing into the batter and then flattening with a spatula. Fry gently so the sweet potato has time to cook through, about 2-3 minutes each side. Stack on a plate with kitchen paper.

Crush the garlic and combine with the salt and vinegar to form a dipping sauce. The fritters also work well with sweet chilli sauce.

Carrot & Courgette Fritters

These make the ultimate TV snack dinner, and are surprisingly quick and fun to make. You can vary the contents depending on what you have to hand, but I find a base of carrots and courgettes is a good flavour and texture combination to start with, and hold together well while cooking. Sweet chilli sauce and some good TV or a movie are a must! We're currently watching the third season of Breaking Bad, and it's utterly brilliant.

I've served these with a variety of accompaniments: ideally you want something fairly plain that you can eat with your hands. I've usually ended up serving with plain short-grain brown rice, which wins on the former but not the latter. If you wanted something a little more healthy then a sharply-dressed salad would contrast nicely against the crispy fried fritters. The recipe here is enough for two and can be prepared in half an hour; since the cooking is a little human-intensive, you'll need to scale the cooking time if you're preparing these for more people.

Ingredients:

• 2 fat courgettes
• 3 large carrots
• 2-3 spring onions
• a small handful of fresh mint or fresh coriander
• a big piece of ginger
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 3 tbsp plain flour
• 1 egg, lightly beaten

Finely chop the spring onions and herbs, and scrub or peel the carrots. Peel back about an inch of the skin from the large piece of ginger. Grate it coarsely up to the limit of the skin (you can then cut off and discard the stringy bits). Grate the carrots and courgettes in the same grater: they'll push through the nice gingery juice you might lose if you left the ginger til last. Put all the gratings in a very large bowl and sprinkle over the coriander, flour and egg. Using a spoon or your hands, combine all the ingredients into a squishy mess.

Set 1-2 frying pans over a moderate heat with a few tbsp of vegetable oil in each: more pans = a faster turnover, but more chaos! Taking a few tbsp of battered vegetables at a time, place them into the hot oil and pat flat with a spatula. Fry for two minutes on each side, or until golden brown on each side. They don't keep long, so serve immediately with sweet chilli sauce!