The last days of summer during my childhood here in Hawley were golden, both literally and figuratively. The landscape was filled with the bright yellow of sunflowers and the duller yellow of hay. The sun seemed to shine every day as my friends and I swam and swam and swam.
Corn was consumed every single evening — just before all the neighborhood children played a spirited game of Kick the Can and enjoyed an ice cream bar. I loved corn then. I still do. The act of eating it takes a certain amount of deliberation. With its lovely long rows of kernels, this vegetable stretches on like a perfect summer day or evening.
The freshest corn — and of course, we eat only the freshest — is sweet and not starchy, purchased the day of its picking at the farm on which it grew. Most of the time, I still serve corn as my mother did when I was young. I quickly boil, steam or grill it and add butter, salt and pepper.
I’m a lot less lavish with the butter than I was as a child, of course; in fact, sometimes I omit it altogether. Once in a while, however, I feel the urge to go beyond straight corn, particularly with leftover kernels … and particularly when I’m looking for something to cook for this column!
My mother’s favorite use for leftover corn was to make succotash. She loved to combine it with cranberry beans — those whitish beans with pink stripes that appear in farmstands and stores only in the early fall. As soon as I find some cranberry beans, I’ll be making her recipe again this year.
Meanwhile, below is one of my favorite ways to use leftover corn kernels. It combines the corn with another perfect late-summer food, the tomato. However I eat it, the texture and flavor of corn always take me back to those golden days and nights of my childhood when time stood still, children played and laughed, and the landscape glimmered with yellow.
Today, I am more aware of the fact that the yellow outside and inside won’t last forever. The long evenings are getting shorter. I have to go swimming an hour earlier in the afternoon in order to withstand the increasing coldness of the water.
Soon, swimming will end for the season. Once the temperatures start dipping into the 40s at night, our stream becomes frigid. I can withstand a certain amount of cold water. I have, after all, been swimming in cold water all my life. When the water begins to feel as though it is peeling the skin off my bones, however, even my sturdy little body starts to yell, “Enough!”
Eventually, the corn will go away as well. The farmstands will close up for the season, and the farmers will tidy up their fields and get ready for a little down time. Until that happens, I intend to rage against the dying of the light. I’ll swim as much as I can and eat as much corn as I can.
I came up with this recipe years ago as part of a blogathon I organized along with the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources and the charitable nonprofit Mass Farmers Markets. The event was called “Loving Local.”
The late Lee Peters, a talented graphic artist, designed a fun logo for “Loving Local.” I like to think I could be the farmerette in his image … although I’m really not very good at growing food. Happily, I do excel in eating it.
I hope my recipe and this golden season remind you to support local farmers, farmstands and farmers markets. And I hope you enjoy my fritters.
Loving Local Corn Fritters with Salsa Fresca
Ingredients:
for the salsa:
3 medium farm-fresh tomatoes or 5 plum tomatoes
2 jalapeño peppers, seeded and chopped
3 scallions, finely chopped (white part plus some green)
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
a handful of fresh cilantro, chopped
the juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon salt
for the fritters:
1/2 cup flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
freshly ground pepper to taste
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 cup (generous) grated sharp cheddar cheese
1/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 egg
chopped parsley and/or cilantro as desired
2 cups leftover corn kernels
peanut, canola, or even olive oil as needed for frying
for assembly:
sour cream or crème fraiche to taste
Instructions:
Begin by making the salsa.
Core and chop the tomatoes. Using a slotted spoon, move them into a medium bowl. Discard the remaining juice or use it as part of the liquid in soup.
To the bowl add the peppers, the scallions, the garlic and the cilantro. Stir in the lime juice and the salt. Allow the salsa to sit for at least 1/2 hour so the flavors can get used to each other.
To start on the fritters, preheat the oven to 200 degrees.
In a bowl thoroughly combine the flour, the baking powder, the salt, the pepper, the cumin and the cheese.
Whisk together the milk, the oil and the egg. Add the herbs if you are using them. (I love them, but some people seem to be prejudiced against the distinctive flavor of cilantro.) Stir this liquid into the flour mixture. A few lumps are just fine. Stir in the corn.
Pour oil into a frying pan until it just about covers the bottom of a frying pan when you swirl it around to distribute it. Heat the oil until it is about 350 degrees. (It will shimmer.)
Pop spoonsful of batter into the hot oil.
Cook the batter quickly, turning as needed, until it is golden brown. Do not crowd the fritters in the pan. They will be idiosyncratic in shape — the word “rustic” comes to mind — but lovely. Add a little more oil if you really must for frying.
When individual fritters are ready drain them on paper towels and store them in the warm oven until all the fritters have been cooked.
Top each fritter with a spoonful of salsa and a dollop of sour cream or crème fraiche.
Serves 4 to 6
Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.