Did I mention that we have a lot of corn at the moment?  The first day back from our holidays, I picked 14 cobs and, two days later, eight more. We, usually, have a glut this time of the year and go into corn fritter mode.  I have previously posted Bill Grangers’ sweetcorn fritters with roasted tomatoes and bacon and corn & ricotta cakes with roasted tomatoes and pesto from Delicious magazine.  If you are inundated with corn or love corn fritters, I recommend both recipes but, for us, it was time to try something new.

This recipe is from Christine Manfield’s Tasting India. It is a big, beautiful book.   I bought it for Maus just after it was published because we had a love affair with India for quite a while. 

Interestingly, I have three of Christine’s books and this is the first recipe I have made from them.  I bought the book Spice and, after a perusal, decided all the recipes were just too much effort.  I have clearly carried through that thought to her other books, although this recipe required no more effort than any other corn fritter recipe and tasted decidedly better than many.  I think I may have judged her recipes a little prematurely. 

We had Christine’s corn fritters for dinner one night and then leftovers for lunch the next day. 

The next night we tried a Stephanie Alexander recipe (sweetcorn brunch fritters) and had those left overs for dinner last night.  Let me assure you, there will be no corn on the table tonight.

As the name suggests, Stephanie Alexander’s recipe was not really suitable for dinner (the fritters were served with maple syrup and bacon) but we gave them a go anyway.  There was way too much polenta in the recipe, for my liking.  You could barely taste the corn.  Consequently, they won’t be featuring in a post.

The feature recipe calls for one cup (165g) of corn kernels.  We used more than that because I stripped two cobs before I measured the kernels and found I had too much.  Whilst I liked the fritters, I think they needed the extra corn.  I think we could have added even more.  There is a lot of flour in the recipe and they could be doughy.  Because of this tendency, I would make the fritters relatively small.  Each fritter should only be one spoonful (heaped tablespoon or there abouts) – you want lots of nice crispy bits.  Both Maus and I thought you could also up the spices.  Make them as is and then decide for yourself.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups (300g) plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cummin
• 1 tsp garam masala
• ½ tsp turmeric
• 1 egg
• ¾ cup (180 mls) milk
• 1 tbs* butter, melted
• 1 cup (165g) corn kernels  (See above – consider using more)
• 5 spring (green) onions, finely diced
• 3 tbs* finely diced green capsicum
• 1 small green chilli, finely diced
• 3 tbs* chopped coriander
• vegetable oil, for deep frying

*These are 20 mil tablespoons

Method:

1. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt and spices in a bowl.
2. In another bowl, whisk the egg, milk and melted butter, then add this to the flour mixture and stir until smooth.  Christine advises the batter should be quite thick, so if it feels slightly runny, add a little extra flour.  Ours was already really thick.
3. Combine the corn kernels, spring onions, capsicum, chilli and fresh coriander, then fold into the batter until evenly mixed.
4. Heat the oil in a wok.  Drop a few spoonfuls of corn batter into the hot oil and fry for 3 minutes.  Turn over and fry for another minute, then remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel.
5. Continue frying until all the batter has been used.

[Postscript:  I just picked 13 more cobs of corn, 2 kilos of snake beans and 3 tomatoes (the first of the tomatoes).  Time for a big cook up!!]