Sweetcorn Chili Fritters with Home Made Salsa

We're in sweetcorn season for sure now! The weekly veg box seems full of them, and yet we're still getting a reassuring amount of tomatoes too. That's what I love about autumn and seasonal food.

I thought I was running out of sweetcorn steam until I came across this recipe and added just a pinch of red and green chillies and a few inches of leeks to give a little more flavour. If you don't tolerate heat well, just use the original recipe as it's perfect. The home-made salsa is a perfect accompaniment, and we served it with some Spanish style potatoes: simply peel, dice, and boil them before drizzling a little extra virgin olive oil and a good sprinkle of paprika. It's a kind of Latin/Spanish fusion but I like it. I've also substituted half the amount of flour for chickpea flour for extra protein. If you buy chickpea flour from an ethnic shop (it's called gram flour of channa flour) please be aware that it may not be packed in a gluten free facility. Some coeliacs will be fine with this level of contamination, others won't be. It's also possible that you start out being ok with it and find over time that you do eventually need to switch to certified gluten free flours.

Sweetcorn Chili Fritters:
Serves 4
Time: 20-25 minutes.

• 50g Doves gluten free plain white flour
• 50g Doves gram flour (chickpea flour)
• 1 tbsp gluten free baking powder, or make your own.
• Seasoning
• Medium egg (or you could use a gluten free egg replacer like Organ No Egg)
• 150ml non dairy milk (I used Rice Dream, fortified with calcium)
• 2 kernels from 2 ears sweetcorn, boiled for ten minutes and drained. 
• (optional) 1 small green chilli, chopped finely
  
• (optional) 1 inch of a red chilli, more if you can handle the heat! Chopped finely as above. You can use a sweet pepper instead if you prefer. Just chop it finely.
• (optional) 2 inches of a medium thickness leek, chopped finely.

  1. In a frying pan gently brown the chopped leeks, green pepper and red chilli on a medium heat. About 3-4 minutes should be ok.
   2. Mix the flour, baking powder and seasoning into a large bowl, add the egg and gradually beat in 150ml milk to form a smooth batter. It'll be quite thick. 
   2. Add the leeks, chilli and sweetcorn kernels to the batter add to the batter mix.
   3. In a frying pan, add a good glug of light olive oil (I like Bertoli extra light. You could use extra olive oil but it froms free radicals at high heat, which isn't so healthy). Once hot, use a ladel or large spoon to fry spoonful of mixture for about 2 mins each side until golden and crisp on each side. They'll puff up a little bit likes scotch pancakes so don't worry if at first it looks very lumpy.
   4. Serve the sweetcorn fritters with a salsa and spanish style potatoes or brown rice.

Here's the recipe I used for the raw salsa. It's lovely!