Courgette

Courgette sits alongside aubergine as one of the two vegetables Greek cooking reaches for constantly through summer, grated for fritters, sliced and fried, hollowed and stuffed alongside tomatoes and peppers in a gemista tray, or, in its most delicate form, its actual flowers stuffed and fried whole.

Grated courgette carries a great deal of water, and the single most important step in any courgette fritter, kolokithokeftedes included, is salting the grated flesh and squeezing it firmly in a clean tea towel until genuinely dry before it goes anywhere near a batter. Skipping this step is the single most common reason homemade courgette fritters turn out soggy or refuse to hold together in the pan.

The vegetable's mild flavour means it takes on whatever it is cooked with readily, which is exactly why it works so well stuffed with rice and herbs or paired with the assertive flavours of feta, mint and dill in a fritter, rather than being treated as a standalone star the way aubergine sometimes is.