Greek Vegetable Patties with Tzatziki

Greek yoghurt for tzatziki wants to be thick before you even start draining the cucumber — it's doing double duty carrying flavour and holding shape, and a thin, UK-supermarket "natural yoghurt" will turn the sauce runny no matter how well you squeeze the cucumber. If that's what's in your fridge, tip it into a sieve lined with a napkin for twenty minutes first and let some whey drip off; you're compensating for a wetter starting point, that's all. Cucumber: any firm one works, but scoop the seeds out regardless of variety — seeds carry disproportionate water and contribute nothing. Garlic crushed rather than sliced because you want it to disappear into the yoghurt, not announce itself in bites.

Potatoes: a waxy or all-rounder variety holds its shape better under double-roasting than a floury one, which can turn fluffy-to-mushy with two trips through the oven. Olive oil here is doing a frying job at oven temperature — any neutral or mild oil works, but olive oil's lower smoke point isn't a problem at 175°C, it's well within range, so don't feel you need something more "stable" for a domestic oven at this heat.

For the patties, the flour is structural, not flavour — plain flour, a few spoons, just enough to let the egg set into something that grips the vegetables rather than a loose scramble. Pointed cabbage is chosen for how finely it chops and how little water it gives off compared with a round white cabbage — if that's what you've got, salt and squeeze it the same way you did the cucumber, or you'll water down the mix and undo the resting step's work. Sun-dried tomatoes bring concentrated sweetness and a bit of chew against the softer vegetables — a sprinkle of tomato purée mixed in is a fair stand-in if you've none in the cupboard, though you'll lose the chewy bite.

Chickpeas pulsed to a coarse crumb, not a paste — you want texture holding the patty together, not hummus with cabbage in it. If you haven't a blender, a fork and some elbow grease against the side of the bowl gets you close enough; just don't walk away and leave them whole, they won't bind anything. Halloumi crumbled into the mix is there for salt and a bit of squeak; any firm, high-melting cheese that doesn't collapse into oil under heat is the real criterion — a firm feta is a reasonable swap, though it brings more tang and less chew.

For the side salad, halloumi sliced and fried needs a dry pan surface and patience before you flip it — push it too early and it tears instead of releasing; leave it until it lifts on its own, which is the same cue you'd use for a fried egg not sticking. Rocket and halved tomatoes want nothing more than olive oil, thyme and black pepper; this part of the plate isn't cooked so much as assembled, and that's deliberate — after the oven's been running two trays at once, something that needs no heat at all earns its place on the plate.

This feeds four as a main, not a side despite the category it's filed under — a Sunday roast habit of expecting meat and three veg won't quite map onto it, but the patties are substantial enough, with the potatoes, to not miss it. Patience sits in at least three points here — the cucumber salting, the batter resting, the potatoes browning rather than just cooking through — and none of them can be rushed by turning the oven up. Higher heat just dries the outside before the inside's done; it doesn't buy you time back.