Sunday, September 16, 2018

The Best Corn Fritters

Summer is drawing to a close here in western Pennsylvania. The heat wave broke right after Labor Day and the last of summer's bounty is ready for harvest. While trolling Facebook marketplace, my clever husband found a woman in Export, PA who raises chickens and sells their eggs. After doing a little research, he'd found a nice looking farm stand and a local meat market nearby. With a slight chill in the air, he surprised me with a Saturday morning outing in search of farm fresh vittles.

We started out right after breakfast and reached our first stop Schramm Farms & Orchards not long after they opened. The Schramm family really knows what they're doing and just about everything for sale in the spacious, clean farm store is grown on their own farm. We bought ginger gold apples, onions, honey and a basket of the biggest, reddest and most fragrant tomatoes I've ever seen. But the real score at Schramm's was the corn. We bought a dozen ears of bi-color corn that had just been picked that morning. I was truly in my happy place. After a trip to C&S Meats for some chicken, we hit our final destination, our new friend Candice's house. Candice has a small flock of chickens and the younger ones have just started laying, so we bought a dozen eggs and made our way home for an afternoon of food prep.


With a dozen ears of corn sitting in my fridge, I had some decisions to make. I knew some would go in the freezer and some would be boiled and eaten right off the cob, but I had a swinging load of corn to deal with. Then I remembered an episode of America's Test Kitchen where Dan Souza demonstrated a unique method for making the most yummy looking corn fritters. By pureeing and cooking half the corn first, the batter needs less flour and delivers maximum corn flavor. That sounded just fine with me.


CORN FRITTERS:

4 ears of fresh corn
2 tbsp all purpose flour
2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
2 tbsp corn starch
1 large egg
2 tbsp butter (for cooking the corn)
1 small minced jalapeno pepper (optional)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
vegetable oil for frying

The first step of this interesting preparation involves turning half the corn into a puree. I cut the kernels off of two ears of corn directly into a large, deep mixing bowl. My blender is out of commission right now, so I used an immersion blender the pulverize the corn into a thick puree. Mine was a lot chunkier than Dan's, but you can achieve a smoother texture by using a traditional blender. I put a medium skillet over medium low heat and dropped in a tablespoon of butter. Corn has a lot of natural sugar in it and it will burn if you cook it over high heat, so its best to keep the temperature moderately low while cooking this puree. It also wants to stick to the pan, so make sure you stir this mixture frequently as it cooks. Once the butter was melted, the corn puree went into the pan and I cooked it over medium low heat until it turned a deep golden color and was very thick and pasty, almost the texture of polenta, which took about 10 minutes. I scooped it into a mixing bowl and set it aside to cool. Then I cut the kernels off of the remaining two ears of corn and got ready for the next step.

Now, if you've ever made corn fritters before, you know the whole process is quite messy. Corn flies everywhere when you cut it off the cob, so I cut mine directly into a big, deep bowl. The other big mess happens when you fry the fritters and pieces of fresh corn, which are filled with water, explode when they hit the hot oil. It can be quite dangerous and my husband and I have both gotten nasty little burns from hot corn shrapnel. The solution is to cook the corn kernels first, which allows the water to evaporate and the flavors to develop. Its nice to let the kernels brown a bit in the pan to give them a smokey taste. I cleaned the pan I'd just used to cook the puree, put it over medium heat and added the rest of the butter and the corn kernels. While they toasted in the pan, I put the rest of the ingredients into the bowl with the cooled corn puree, mixing the egg up slightly before adding it, and gently blended it all together. The original recipe called for chives and a pinch of cayenne pepper, but the combo of corn and jalapeno is such a classic pairing and I just happened to have jalapenos growing in my garden. I could imagine adding a little cumin or curry powder to the basic recipe for an exotic flavor. Fresh herbs like parsley or cilantro would be good, too. Go wild, do whatever strikes your fancy.

Once the corn kernels were slightly browned. I added them to the bowl and got ready to fry these bad boys up. In a large skillet, I poured enough vegetable oil to come about an inch up the side of the pan and turned the heat to medium, allowing the oil to heat slowly so my fritters wouldn't scorch. To test the oil, drop a little nub of fritter batter in. If it starts bubbling, you're good to go. I added tablespoonful dollops of the batter to the oil and flattened each one out a bit using the back of the spoon. When the edges were golden, I flipped them and let them cook until they were GBD - golden brown and delicious. I drained them momentarily on paper towel, just to remove a bit of the oil, and ate them hot with a little drizzle of homemade honey mustard sauce, which is just 2 tbsp of mayo and 1 tbsp each of honey and dijon mustard. The corn starch in this recipe makes the fritters crispy and the cooked corn puree makes them slightly chewy and really, really corny. Plus, no splatter burns and my kitchen didn't look like a complete disaster when I was done. Serve them as a side dish, an appetizer or a snack, I promise these corn fritters are perfect for any occasion.


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