With October temperatures in our Southern neighborhood now running pretty damned close to the ideal range (low 70s for highs this week), fall and even some late summer produce is still rolling into the local farmers markets.
Last Saturday I was off scrounging green tomatoes to try yet another batch of Piccalilli (Chow Chow in some circles) and stumbled across a small food fair set up next to a popular Saturday morning market in town.
A church group with one of the best equipped food trailers I’ve ever seen was hawking fried catfish and what they were calling a corn oyster, basically a spicy corn fritter made from corn sliced off the cob literally minutes before.
It was a bit early in the day for fried catfish in my book, though I couldn’t resist an order of the corn fritters. They were golden brown, crunchy, studded with nuggets of corn and just enough serrano chili and cayenne to make things interesting.
Ooching around to the back of the trailer I was able to sidle up to the mistress in charge of the fritter operation. She was chatty and shared that her team had been making and selling corn oysters for years; they’d sifted through dozens of family recipes (and more online) and cobbled together this one several years ago.
They were mixing up much larger batches as you might imagine (she said they’d brought ingredients to make roughly 4000 that day) though she had a stack of home sized recipes printed out to give to curious customers. She insisted the secret weapon to making these special was folding in the egg whites at the end.
Obviously not everyday fair, these corn fritters (oysters for you died-in-the-wool southerners) will elevate your next fish fry to levels you’ve never imagined. I hear they’re some of the most sought after tailgate food too.
Guarantee you can’t eat just one.
4 ears fresh corn, kernels cut plus scrapings of the cob to extract the corn milk
2 eggs, separated
2 tbsp. half and half
2 tbsp. serrano or jalapeno pepper, minced
1/4 cup cornmeal
3/4 cup flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
Corn oil for frying
Strip the corn. Cut the corn kernels from the ears of corn using a sharp knife, come back and scrape each cob to extract as much of the corn milk / liquid as you can.
Mix it up. In a medium bowl whisk the egg yolks until they begin to thicken; add the corn, half and half and your pepper of choice.
In another bowl, stir or whisk together the cornmeal, flour, salt, sugar, baking powder and cayenne; now add to the corn mixture and stir until just combined.
The secret weapon. Beat the two egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold the whites into the corn mixture until well combined.
Fry ‘em up. Fill your dutch oven or cast iron fry pan with corn oil to a depth of 3 to 4 inches; heat to 350ish.
Drop carefully into the hot oil in roughly 2 tbsp. sized scoops (they used an ice cream scoop) and fry 5-6 minutes until golden brown and crispy, turning as needed. Drain on paper towels or more traditionally a brown paper sack, pour your dipping sauce of choice and go to it.
Enjoy.
