Herbed Feta Fritters

There was a sweet and tasty post over at Food Buzz recently by Sam the Greek Gourmand in which his plans to produce a banquet for the 24,24,24 Blog event (24 feasts in the same 24 hours by 24 bloggers from all over the world) was interrupted (happily) by the early arrival of his new son!

Sam took it all in stride, and changed around his plans to provide an awesome Greek feast for the hospital staff that so lovingly took care of his new, expanded family.

I prowled around his great blog and found myself bookmarking recipes right and left. The first thing I decided to try out were these magnificent Feta Fritters. Sam's recipe, handed down from his Aunt Dimitra, consists of mashed potatoes, feta cheese, egg and crumbs with a luscious infusion of dill and mint. I went out to the herb patch to gather my ever-present dill but the mint plant had closed down for the season. I have contained the invasive mint in its own large container and I guess this caused the plant to hibernate early. Luckily, though, I still had a shrubby rosemary plant hunkered down in another section of the garden that I hope will overwinter in our Zone 4 climate. The mint no doubt would give the fritters a different taste, but I figured rosemary plants, a Mediterranean native and a distant relation in the mint family, would also work well, and happily, it did. I subbed in an equal amount of finely minced rosemary leaves for the mint (sorry, Aunt Dimitra!) and substituted brown rice flour for the all-purpose flour called for in Sam's recipe to keep them gluten-free, and man, they were good!

Sam serves the feta fritters as an appetizer, but I served them as a hot garnish for a nice tomato, lettuce, and caper salad tossed with an herbal vinaigrette and they were a beautiful and fragrant meal. I even had leftovers for two lunches the next day, though the fritters are less yummy when cold.

After three years of herbal fun, Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen, the founder of the Weekend Herb Blogging, has passed the reins on to Haalo, an Australian food blogger and author of the gorgeously-photographed Cook (almost) Anything At Least Once. This week's guest host of Weekend Herb Blogging is Diary of a Fanatic Foodie, where the accent is on Italian cooking, Baltimore food favorites and other luscious posts. I am submitting this adapted version of Sam's Feta Fritters as my entry for this week's round (#158!) of WHB and urge you to try it soon, that's how yummy these fritters are. I'll be making them again in the near future, perhaps over a Greek Salad with Kalamata olives and sliced Bermuda onion. Be sure to check back with Diary of a Fanatic Foodie after Sunday for the complete WHB roundup.