I had one thing on my mind and one thing only. CORN NUGGETS! Yeah, that’s right, I didn’t stutter. Little corn hush puppies. I was on canapés and I planned on making canapés my slave!—until the freaking deep fryer started giving me problems. The first time I ever laid hands on one of these gooey corn delicacies was in the middle of no where Maryland while watching Garrett play baseball with my dad, Stephen, Tio, Tia, and Seth (I believe). Anyways, we went this joint called something mama’s or whatever and as an appetizer they had corn fritters. Sign, sealed, delivered- those were ours! Pretty sure we ended up ordering three baskets worth and went back to that place every single night (we didn’t have a lot of options in the rinky dink town). When I took a bite out of that fritter—gooey corn came oozing out! It was a package straight out of g-d’s mailroom.
Today I set out to recreate the eighth wonder of the world—corn nuggets. Chef and I made the batter out of creamed corn, corn starch, ap flour, baking soda, baking powder, brown sugar, normal sugar, molasses, sautéed onions, salt, whole corn chunks, etc. Chef made a popcorn stock thinking that we’d need some extra liquid, but we didn’t because we added crème fraiche instead. We formed little tiny balls, did a plethora of test runs, and finally figured out how to semi solve our grease issue. The fritters were soaking up too much oil, so before we dropped them in the oil, we coated them in flour. We should have frozen them solid and then dropped them into the oil... think that was the missing key. Although, we didn’t get that gooey ooey consistency that I wanted to come squirting out, the hush puppies were light and fluffy and flavor was spot on! Chef created a jalapeno/roasted green pepper puree to top it off and added a micro cilantro leaf on top for decoration! I had fun making them and can’t wait to keep experimenting with the recipe because mark my words, one day I will recreate the corn puppy I ate that day at that place called something mama’s.
That is also a picture of what the kitchen looks like with all the students! Where is waldo?
Happy weekend!
E