Saturday 31 March 2012

sweetcorn fritters + roast tomato + bacon



























Hi there! Remember me? The incredibly inconsistent, constantly absent, lazy food blogger? Well I'm back...for now.

I normally wake up too late to make breakfast so weekends are normally the only time I bother cooking in the morning. Actually this meal went from being breakfast, to brunch and then to lunch because I am so slow at cooking and there were some few technical difficulties. But more on that later.

So this recipe is by Bill Granger from his book 'Sydney Food' which I absolutely love. Everything in it is really quite simple to make which is fantastic for me because I'm not very good with savoury dishes. I was really lucky to have all the ingredients except the capsicum and halved the recipe because it was just me eating (why am I so lonely, someone please join me).


























sweetcorn fritters with roast tomato and bacon [serves 4]

1 cup plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1 tablespoon sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup fresh corn kernels (from cob)
1/2 cup diced red capsicum
1/2 cup sliced spring onion
1/4 cup coriander and parsely (combined)
4 tablespoon vegetable oil
8 halves of roast tomato
1 bunch rocket ( I used baby spinach leaves because I didn't have any)
4 rashers grilled bacon
olive oil

1. Sift flour, baking powder, salt and paprika into a bowl and stir in the sugar.
2. In another bowl combine eggs and milk.
3. Make well in dry ingredients and slowly add the egg mixture into the dry while whisking
4. Place corn, capsicum, spring onions and herbs into a mixing bowl and add just enough batter to bind them (about 3/4 cup)
5. Heat oil in a non-stick fry pan over medium heat and drop 2 tablespoons of batter per fritter. Cook 2 at a time.
6. Cook for 2 minutes until golden and flip to cook the other side.
7. Transfer to plate and keep warm while cooking the rest.
8. Place one fritter on each plate. Top with 2 tomato halves, a handful of rocket, a rasher of bacon and another fritter. Drizzle olive oil around the base.



roast tomatoes

4 roma tomatoes halved lengthways
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 180 C
2. Place tomato in baking tray with cut side up and drizzle with olive oil.
3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
4. Roast in oven for 40 minutes.




























As you can see, there is nothing technically difficult with this dish. The only problem I had was roasting the tomatoes. Since I was only cooking for myself, I though it would be a waste to use to big oven just for one tomato, so I used our mini oven instead. Unfortunately the close proximity between the olive oil and the heating bars caused in a minor fire. If you don't know me, I am terrified of fire which is why, I don't often cook savoury things. It took a while to get over my fear of burning to death to finally turn off the damn oven.  So then I transferred the tomatoes to our slightly larger mini oven but the same thing happened. In fear of burning our house down with me along with it, I decided that it was best just use our regular oven which was slightly wasteful, but safer.

I also forgot to add salt to the fritter batter which was incredibly dumb of me so if you try this recipe, don't do that. My fritters were also slightly thicker than what they should have been but cooked through nonetheless. It was really quite delicious and will probably make it again though for the amount of time it took, would only make it if others were eating too.

Not sure how my attempt compares to the original though I definitely plan to try sometime in the holidays.



























And okay I couldn't resist. So I guess I will be reading spoilers for next season. Two days! Maybe I'll bake something 'Game of Thrones' related? Am I that lame?

Indeed I am.

So farewell. I hope you have enjoyed looking at what I ate to break my fast.

And oh yes,

Winter is coming.