Greece: vegan tomatokeftedes

Our vegan world tour has arrived in Greece where we cook vegan tomatokeftedes, a fried snack celebrating tomatoes by pairing them with herbs and feta cheese to create fritters to enjoy with some tzatziki. Read on to learn more about Greek cuisine and tomatokeftedes or jump straight to the recipe.

Greek cuisine

Greece, an old country in the eastern Mediterranean sea, partially located on the European mainland and partially a series of islands in the Aegean Sea. In terms of cuisine, the country is influenced by its Southern European neighbours and its large eastern neighbour, Turkey and the former Ottoman Empire ​[1], [2]​. Mediterranean and Greek ingredients such as olives, olive oil, phyllo dough, fresh vegetables and seafood are abundant. Greek food has a large variety of dishes, like lentil soups, baked giant beans (gigantes), and rich casseroles like moussaka and pastitsio. You’ll also find barbequed seafood and meat like souvlaki and gyros, stuffed and baked vegetables such as peppers and eggplant, and plenty of cheeses, feta probably being the most famous one.

Greek dips

The Greek cuisine is full of different dips. Apart from the well-known tzatziki (yoghurt, garlic, cucumber, and sometimes dill), you can also find melitzanosalata, a dip of roasted eggplants ​[1]​, a potato and garlic dip called skordalia ​[3]​, and the confusingly named fava. Unlike the popular foul medames we made when visiting Egypt, Greek fava is not made from fava beans but rather yellow split peas. The peas are boiled with fried onion, mashed and served with raw onion, olive oil and capers ​[4]​.

Fried snacks

Greek food seems to be full of fried snacks. Revithokeftedes are Greek chickpea fritters, similar to falafel with parsley, garlic and ground coriander but are made with boiled chickpeas (as opposed to plain soaked chickpeas in falafel) and some recipes contain eggs ​[5], [6]​. Different types of fried cheeses or vegetables like zucchini or eggplant are also very common. Deep-fried tomato balls, called tomatokeftedes, is something I haven’t encountered before but it sounds worth a try. The high water content of the tomatoes seems like it would make the dish tricky to fry but looks like it works, based on all the recipes online.

Tomatokeftedes

The Greek cuisine embraces the freshness of its produce and the abundant local vegetables. One such local hero is the tomato, and in particular, the tomatoes grown on the island of Santorini or Thira ​[7]​. This volcanic island has the perfect combination of sun, heat, dry-ness, and fertile, volcanic ash to produce exceptionally flavourful Santorini tomatoes that have become one of the island’s main agricultural products. Apart from eating the flavour-packed tomatoes straight from the vine, one way to celebrate them is to prepare tomatokeftedes, one of Greece’s many fried snacks, sometimes described tomatokeftedes as a Greek salad in fritter form ​[8]​.

How to make tomatokeftedes

As the name implies, the main ingredient of tomatokeftedes is the tomato. Finely chopped or even grated, the tomatoes are mixed with onion, herbs, and flour to create a dough or batter ​[8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]​. The most flavourful tomatoes, such as Santorini tomatoes, should ideally be used but can be hard to come by. Some cooks suggest adding a few sundried tomatoes or tomato puré to enhance the tomato flavour ​[8], [11]​. To boost the flavor of the tomatokeftedes, a variety of herbs, most commonly, parsley, mint, and dried oregano, are added to the dough. Sometimes dill, basil, scallions, or thyme also make their way into the keftedes. Many cooks crumble in a block of salty feta cheese for a bit of extra flavour while an egg might be used to add some cohesion if needed. The dough is then formed into small balls and deep-fried or plopped into a frying pan and shaped into flat patties. Serve as a snack with some yoghurt-based dip, such as tzatziki.

Vegan tomatokeftedes

To prepare vegan tomatokeftedes, the main replacement needed is the feta cheese present in many (but not all) versions of tomatokeftedes. I came across two unintentionally vegan recipes where the cooks just didn’t use feta or eggs without specifically doing so with a vegan audience in mind ​[9], [10]​. While a minority of omnivore tomatokeftedes do use an egg, it is not required for the overall tomatokeftedes structure and can easily be omitted. Unlike the egg, the feta is harder to tackle. Some vegan adaptations rely on replacing the feta with a commercial vegan feta option ​[15]​ such as Violife or Daiya ​[16]​ or just omitting the cheese completely ​[17]​. In my preparation, I decided to try making my own vegan feta cheese analogue.

Homemade vegan feta cheese analogue

There are many vegan feta cheese recipes out there and which one to use depends on your application. The different marinated tofu recipes ​[18], [19]​ may be great in salads but will likely not behave as a good feta substitute when heated in the tomatokeftedes. So I opted to try a recipe using agar agar (also known as just agar) as the structural element so the “cheese” can melt when frying the vegan tomatokeftedes. Agar agar is a large carbohydrate molecule extracted from seaweed and is commonly used in vegan puddings, gels, and sometimes cheeses. Similar in use to animal gelatin, it is liquid at high temperatures and sets to a gel at lower temperatures. For the feta, I followed Alison Andrews’ recipe for vegan feta where she blends tofu, cashews and flavour components like nutritional yeast, vinegar and herbs, before mixing in boiled agar agar and letting it set ​[20]​.

During my research, I came across an alternative to agar: coconut oil ​[21]​. Coconut oil has a high melting point and is often solid at room temperature. If added to a tofu-based batter, the batter will solidify when cooled, making coconut oil an interesting option as it allows the cheese to melt in the mouth, unlike agar which melts at higher temperatures.

Conclusion

I must say I was a bit sceptical about deep-frying tomatoes, especially grated ones, before I tried it. Seemed like it would be way too watery to fry well but there is quite a bit of flour in the dough that helps soak it up. The dough fried very well and the resulting vegan tomatokeftedes were really tasty, with a great mint flavour added to the tomatoes. I really like the combination of grating and chopping the tomatoes. The grated ones added a lot of juiciness and ensured the entire dough tasted of tomatoes while the chopped ones added nice little juicy “pops” when eating the fritters. Paired really well with a vegan tzatziki. The tomatoes on the surface of the keftedes, the ones exposed to the hot oil, developed some nice umami characteristics as well. For this recipe, I deep-fried half the dough one day and fried the rest in a pan with just a little oil the next day. They tasted very similar so next time I will just go with the pan-fried tomatokeftedes.

That’s it for our stop in Greece. Time to head over to West Asia. If you don’t want to miss the next post, you can subscribe to my email list and I will send you an alert when the post is live.

Vegan tomatokeftedes

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Vegan tomatokeftedes

Tomatokeftedes are a Greek fritter where the main hero is the savoury, flavourful tomato. This vegan tomatokeftedes recipe replaces the traditional feta with a vegan equivalent, either storebought or homemade, your choice.

Course Snack, starter

Cuisine Greek, Mediterranean

Keyword deep fried, herbs, Tomatoes

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes minutes

Servings 20 keftedes

Ingredients

• 4 fresh, firm tomatoes ~400 g
• ½ red onion ~100 g
• 2 scallions
• 100-150 g vegan feta cheese (storebought or homemade) optional
• 2 tbsp chopped, fresh parsley
• 1 tbsp chopped, fresh mint
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 400 mL all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• salt and black pepper to taste
• oil for frying e.g. canola

Instructions

• Grate half the tomatoes, chop the rest. Grate the onion. Finely chop the herbs and scallion.
• Mix all vegetables, fresh and dried herbs, mix in the feta, and season with salt and pepper.
• Add flour and baking powder. Don't add all flour at once but rather add and check texture. You might have to add more flour to firm up the batter. Test the batter by making sure you can form loose balls using two spoons.
• Heat the oil to 160-170℃.
• Shape the dough into small quenelles or balls using two spoons. Drop into the oil and let fry until golden. Don't crowd the pot.
• Alternatively, you can fry the dough in a pan with a little oil and flip halfway.
• Serve with vegan tzatziki.

References