Sweet Corn & Chive Fritters with Ground Cherry Salsa

Taste

Ground cherries — cerises de terre — show up in Quebec baskets for a few weeks in late summer, each one wrapped in its own papery husk. They’re sweet and faintly tropical with a tart edge, and halved raw into a salsa with red onion and lime they cut straight through a fried corn fritter. The fritter batter is deliberately thin on flour, so it’s mostly corn held together rather than a pancake with corn in it, and the chives and green onions keep it from tasting like dessert.

Instructions

1. Make the salsa first. Husk the ground cherries — the papery shells pull off easily — and rinse off the slight stickiness underneath. Halve them into a bowl and add the diced red onion, jalapeño if using, cilantro, and lime juice with a good pinch of salt. Stir and leave to sit while you make the fritters; the onion softens and the juices draw out.

2. Strip and crush the corn. Stand each ear upright in a wide bowl and cut down the sides with a sharp knife to release the kernels. Take about a quarter of them and crush roughly with the flat of the knife or a few pulses in a food processor — the released starch is what binds the fritters.

3. Mix the batter. Whisk the eggs with the milk, then add the flour, baking powder, a teaspoon of salt, and plenty of black pepper. Whisk just until smooth. Fold in all the corn, the chives, and the green onions. The batter should be thick enough to hold its shape on a spoon; if it runs, add another tablespoon of flour. Let it rest for 5 minutes. ⏱︎ 5 min

4. Heat the pan. Melt a tablespoon of the butter in a large non-stick or cast-iron skillet over medium heat until it foams and the foam subsides. Too hot and the outsides colour before the middles set, so keep it at a steady medium.

5. Fry in batches. Drop heaped tablespoons of batter into the pan and flatten each one gently to about 1 cm thick, leaving room between them. Cook for 3 minutes, until the undersides are deep golden and the edges look set and lacy, then flip and cook for 3 minutes more. Move to a rack — not paper towel, which softens the crust — and repeat with more butter for each batch. You should get about 12. ⏱︎ 3 min

6. Serve hot. Stack two or three fritters per plate, add a spoon of sour cream, and pile the ground cherry salsa over the top with some of its juices. Grind over more black pepper and eat straight away, while the edges are still crisp.

Tips

• Ground cherry substitute: Halved cherry tomatoes with a teaspoon of honey stirred in gets you to a similar sweet-tart place. Diced ripe peach or nectarine also works.
• Make it gluten-free: Swap the flour for a 1:1 gluten-free blend or 80 g of fine cornmeal. Cornmeal gives a grittier, more rustic fritter.
• Keeping them warm: Hold cooked fritters on a rack in a 120 °C (250 °F) oven while you fry the rest. They stay crisp for up to 20 minutes.
• Make it a bigger meal: Add a poached or fried egg on top, or a few slices of avocado. Crumbled feta is good here too.
• Frozen corn: Works out of season — thaw 400 g and dry it well on a towel first, or the batter goes watery.