Oh, the end of summer. How I love the cooling days, the longer evenings, the patches of yellow leaves in the cottonwoods. And how I love the harvest. This is the most wonderful time of year to just go to the growers’ market, co-op, or grocery store, see what’s fresh and beautiful, take it home, and do something simple with it. Find beautiful, fresh ingredients and let them sing.
Of course, in New Mexico there’s another harbinger of fall. Around grocery stores and markets of all kinds hangs the evocative scent of roasting green chile. Displaced New Mexicans pine for it – signs at UPS stores blare, “WE SHIP GREEN CHILE!” Meanwhile, folks transplanted to New Mexico from other places fall in love.
And the corn is coming in. Hefty, beautiful, sweet ears from Colorado (Arne and I search for Olathe corn) and Moriarty. I search for the heaviest ears with the thickest butts before taking a peek inside to see if the juicy kernels reach all the way to the end of the cob.
With these ingredients in hand, the answer to “What’s for dinner?” on a Veggie Week night seemed self-evident: green chile and corn fritters. I just had to find the perfect recipe. Poking around on the web led to disappointment. The recipes all seemed too light on corn, too heavy on flour. One even said “These taste just like pancakes with corn stirred in!” I didn’t want pancakes with corn stirred in. I wanted corn, highly flavored with green chile and just held together by a matrix of cornmeal and flour.
Then I remembered that I owned Crescent Dragonwagon’s wonderful book The Cornbread Gospels: 350 pages of cornbread, each recipe I’ve tried absolutely perfect. I knew it would have just what I needed. Indeed, there were two corn fritter recipes listed in the index. One was a green chile corn fritter, but it included red peppers and onions – I wanted pure corn and chile. The “Fresh Corn Fritters” recipe was just what I was looking for: two cobs’ worth of corn kernels, held together with less than half a cup each of flour and liquid. Add some green chile and I’d be in business.
Arne and I have been curious whether the very wet summer would lead to a mild green chile crop, and judging from the chiles I bought from La Montanita Co-op, it has. Both medium and hot pods had nearly imperceptible heat. I chopped and added five, and wished I’d put in more. Usually they’d be too hot to add that much. Always taste your chiles! Jalapenos, New Mexico greens, poblanos – all can be as mild as bell peppers or spicy enough to leave you gasping for a glass of milk. I’ve always considered serranos to be more reliable, with a medium to high heat level, but recently I even had one of those where I could barely perceive the heat. Always taste. And if you don’t use gloves, wash your hands until the tips of your fingers don’t taste spicy. Otherwise rubbing your eyes could lead to a nasty surprise!
I stirred everything together into a beautiful batter, thick with plump kernels of corn. Then, because I guess I’m not as much of a purist as I like to believe, I threw in a handful of Parmesan cheese. Cheddar would be good too, or keep it simple as intended!
The batter fried up into gorgeous, golden cakes that tasted even better than they looked – crisp outside, tender inside, lightly sweet, gently spicy, and absolutely packed with kernels of perfectly cooked crisp-tender corn. You could leave out the green chile for an even simpler, more elemental summer treat, but I think it would be better suited to an appetizer than a main dish. Of course, either way they would also make a fabulous side dish for another summer’s end favorite, grilled meat of any kind.
Fresh Corn and Green Chile Fritters
Notes
Choose the number of chiles to taste, depending on their size and heat. Taste your chiles to be sure - depending on the crop, "mild" NM chiles can be quite spicy, or "hot" ones can have almost no heat. Poblanos are usually mildly spicy, but some can blow your tongue off.
Ingredients
- 2 cobs fresh corn
- 2 to 5 New Mexico green or poblano chiles, roasted and peeled
- 1/4 cup milk
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- 3 tablespoons white or yellow cornmeal
- 1/4 cup white flour
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 cup finely shredded Cheddar or Parmesan cheese, optional
- A few good grinds black pepper, optional
- Mild frying oil (I used peanut)
Instructions
- Carefully cut the corn from each cob, then run the back of a knife over the cobs to extract any remaining liquid and corn pulp. Place corn and corn liquid in a large bowl. Chop the green chile and add it to the corn mixture. Stir in the milk and eggs.
- In a small bowl, combine the cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Sift the mixture into the corn bowl to prevent lumps, or just pour it in (depending on the fussiness of your mood). Add the cheese and/or black pepper, if using. Stir together thoroughly and set aside.
- Pour about 1/2 inch oil into a deep skillet. Heat over medium-high heat to about 360 degrees (if you don't have a thermometer, heat until a small drop of batter sizzles instantly upon contact). You want to maintain a heat of about 350, and it will drop when the batter goes in.
- Use a measuring cup to carefully scoop the batter in by scant 1/4 cups. (Or make snack-sized fritters by scooping in tablespoonfuls.) Fry for about three minutes, maintaining a 350-degree heat as best you can. The corn sometimes pops in the heat and splashes the oil, so use a splatter screen if you have one and stand back at all times.
- When the edges are brown, flip very carefully - I flip toward the side of the skillet, using it to maintain control and not splash the oil - and cook another 3 minutes, until the second side is brown. Remove from the oil and drain on paper towels or a cooling rack set on a sheet pan. Keep warm in a 200-degree oven while you fry the next batch. (Alternatively, fry in a deep fryer according to manufacturer's directions.)
- Serve hot, with a dollop of sour cream if desired - though these are so fresh-tasting and delicious they don't need any garnish at all.
- Adapted from Crescent Dragonwagon's The Cornbread Gospels
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