Weekend Corn Fritters

Aah the weekend. Except this morning it's not my turn for a sleep in. To be fair, being school holidays, I have been rather lucky on that front this week. Little Miss 3 was up at the crack of dawn as usual. This morning's early accomplishment being playing the key board with great gusto at five minutes past six.
"Is it your turn to get up Daddy?"
"No, not this morning"
Oh well. In the absence of extra sleep, we can always resort to extra breakfast.
Now that it's so exceedingly difficult to get a table in a restaurant in Christchurch without booking a week in advance, last minute breakfast missions have become a thing of the past. There are advantages to making a lovely breakfast feast at home: like cooking and eating and remaining in one's dressing gown.

Of course these tasty little treats should not be confined to breakfast food alone, and make a lovely light meal at any time of the day. Serve them with a tomato, avocado, red onion and chopped herb salsa, or with a mixed salad. You can put as much or as little corn as you wish. Peas are also an interesting addition. This recipe serves 2 to 3 people as breakfast. The recipe can be successfully doubled.

Corn Fritters

1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg - separated
1 cup milk
40g butter - melted
Approximately 1 to 2 cups corn, fresh or frozen

Turn the griddle pan on to heat up. A frying pan will do. If your cooking with gas, turn it onto the lowest setting. The hardest part of this recipe is getting the temperature of the pan correct.
Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together.
Whisk the egg whites until they form peaks.
Mix the egg yolk with the milk.
If using frozen corn, defrost by running under hot water. If its added to the mix straight from the freezer, the mixture will freeze and the fritters will not cook evenly.


Now assemble the fritter mixture: make a well in the centre of the flour mix and add the milk mix. Stir from the centre of the bowl using a whisk to incorporate a little of the flour at a time.

Once mixed use a spatula to add the melted butter, followed by the corn. Now gently mix in the whisked egg whites.

 I know that whisking the egg white might sound like a chore, but it makes a real difference to the lightness of the end product. With just one egg white, a whisk and a little elbow grease it takes no time at all.

Use a ladle or large spoon to put a generous amount of the mixture onto the buttered griddle. Once bubbles start to appear, turn the fritter over.

It should rise a little and bounce back in the middle once cooked.

We had ours with some crispy bacon strips and sweet chilli sauce.

This is a great recipe to cook when you have sleepy heads who get up later, as the mixture will happily sit and the fritters can be cooked in a few minutes as the family gets up.

Enjoy your weekend!

'What's in the Fridge' Salad

We all know the feeling: it's 5pm, partners working late, Miss 3 wants carrots for tea, and says she has a sore ear: 'come sit with me Mummy', and tea is not going to cook itself. There's a little bit of this and a little bit of that in the fridge, but it's looking like adding up to a whole lot of nothing much. Arise the fridge Salad: a clever little combination of a few simple found-in-the-fridge ingredients, combined in a flash, and on the table in no time.

I combined half a finely chopped onion, a peeled and julienned carrot (you can grate - just be sure to squeeze out the excess juice), 4 boiled shelled and chopped eggs, a few sliced cherry tomatoes, and about 1 cup of cooked pasta of any shape or description.

Lets be honest here: we all love mayo! 
 
Combine 1 generous tablespoon of mayonnaise with a glugg of olive oil and some roughly chopped parsley.
I would have added a crushed clove of garlic, but mother hubbard the cupboard was bare on that front.






Gently stir the whole lot together and serve it with whatever protein you have available. In our house tonight it was chicken. It could just as well be as simple as some crispy fried bacon added into the salad.

 

 I sprinkled some chicken breast pieces with smoked garlic salt and pepper, seared the outside in the grill pan on the stove top first and then threw them into the oven at 200deg. C.

It should be all but cooked by the time the salad is ready.
A meat thermometer is a great piece of equipment to have: the chicken should reach 75deg.C measured in the thickest part. Overcook it and it will be like eating a white facecloth.




All done and dinner's on the table. Just enough time for bathtime, Miss 3 is off to bed, and there is time left over for me!