Recipe - Ricotta and Pea Fritelli

by Erica Green

NOTE: Print this Page for easy reference when cooking.

This recipe is based on an Italian ricotta frittelle (Fritter) with the main difference being that they are baked rather than fried.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

Method

Preheat the oven to 220C Fan Forced.
Cover the peas with boiling water and let sit for a few minutes until the peas are partially cooked.
Drain the peas and smash up slightly, so that there is a mix of whole and smashed peas.
Combine the peas with ricotta, parmesan, mint, spring onions, lemon zest, chili, eggs, self-raising flour and salt in a bowl and mix well.
Using a small (4 cm/20ml) ice-cream scoop, place mounds onto a parchment lined baking tray.
Spray lightly with rice bran oil.
Bake at 220C for 10-15 min.
Serve with sweet chili sauce.

About the Recipe

This recipe is suitable for vegetarians but is not modifiable for vegans.
You can fry the balls if you want to. I just really don't like frying things. I don't like the smell of the hot oil and it is so much quicker to just pop them in the oven rather than standing over batches of fritters while they cook.
I also use rice bran oil spray because it has a high smoke point, and so you don't get the smell of burning oil.
A note on ricotta. Fresh ricotta is not the same as the smooth ricotta that you can buy in tubs in the supermarket chiller. Smooth ricotta is much wetter than fresh. The fresh ricotta that we are after for this recipe, comes packaged in a strainer and can be bought in the chiller section in some supermarkets and in the delicatessen section of other supermarkets.
If you don't have a small (4cm/20ml) ice-cream scoop, don't worry, you can roll 1 Tbsp. of the mixture into balls. If you cook a lot of small cookie, muffin or fritter, it is worthwhile investing in a small scoop, as it is so much quicker and you get even sizes. I have not seen the smaller scoops in the shops but you can certainly get them on line.