NRN takes a look at restaurants' use of savory fritters with interesting ingredients. This article ran in the Dec. 17, 2012, issue of NRN. Subscribe today.
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Trend spotters are looking at the growing popularity of whole grains and lighter options in the coming year, but that doesn’t mean crispy fried foods will be left behind. More likely than the year of quinoa or kale, 2013 could be the year of the fritter.
A fritter can be virtually anything — but it’s often something savory — that’s breaded or coated in batter and fried. Though common in the South, fritters are spreading and finding good reception throughout the country as a playful and versatile appetizer option. With a little experimentation, chefs are finding that nearly anything is fair game for the fryer, including grains, seafoods, cheeses and even a spicy Korean staple.
“We always have a fritter on the menu. It’s really successful for us,” said Jenn Louis, chef of Lincoln Restaurant and Sunshine Tavern in Portland, Ore.
Inspired by the fried Italian doughnut-like dessert zeppole, Louis created a savory lemon-sage fritter as an $8 appetizer at Lincoln Restaurant.
“They have a nice delicate crust on them, but they’re not too heavy. You’re not going to eat a whole pile of them, but they’re a lovely way to start a meal,” she said.
Louis mixes egg and ricotta, and then adds sage, lemon zest, baking powder and salt. She mixes that and adds the flour just until the mix comes together. She fries the fritters in neutrally flavored rice oil for about three minutes, and then sprinkles them with sea salt or kosher salt and pecorino cheese and serves them with a side of aïoli.
At Miller Union in Atlanta, chef Steven Satterfield’s drive to use local and seasonal products is even reflected in his deep-fried items, including his grit fritters, which are the restaurant’s best-selling appetizer.
“It’s kind of like our Southern version of arancini,” Satterfield said, comparing his fritters to the deep-fried risotto balls of southern Italy. He uses grits from northern Georgia and cheese from the southern part of the state.
He cooks the grits in a 50-50 blend of water and milk, using a little less liquid than the standard four-to-one liquid-to-grain ratio for cooking grits. He stirs in a little cream at the end.
Satterfield pours the grits out 1-inch thick into a hotel pan and then folds in finely diced country ham.
He chills the grits and then uses a small ice cream scoop to form them into balls. He stuffs each one with a one-quarter-inch cube of Thomasville Tomme — a cow’s milk cheese — rolls it in flour and deep fries it at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Satterfield said the flour is essential to proper cooking.
“It needs a little dry coating so the grits don’t explode,” he said. However, cornstarch can be substituted if you want to make the item gluten free.
“It took us a lot to get the science down,” Satterfield said, adding that it’s also fairly labor intensive.
“One guy makes them by hand every day and rolls hundreds of them. It’s a Zen kind of thing,” he said.
He sells an order of seven pieces for $5.
Grit fritters also are on the menu at the Atlanta location of 10-unit Cameron Mitchell concept Ocean Prime, where executive chef Jason Shelley calls them Shrimp & Grits Tater Tots, although they don’t contain any potato.
“It’s kind of a play on shrimp and grits,” he said.
To prepare them, Shelley cooks grits in shrimp stock. For each cup of uncooked grits, he folds in one-half of a pound of minced, cooked shrimp, along with one-half of a pound of puréed raw shrimp. He pipes that mixture into logs, which he then freezes.
He cuts the frozen logs into “tots” and then coats them in flour, followed by an egg wash and panko breadcrumbs.
He deep fries them and serves them on the happy hour menu at Ocean Prime’s Blu Lounge for $7 for a plateful, with a dipping sauce that’s a mixture of house-made cocktail and tartar sauces.
Another Southern classic that gets the fritter treatment is pimiento cheese.
This traditional spread of sharp Cheddar cheese, mayonnaise and pimientos is breaded and fried at the five-unit Del Frisco’s Grille. Corporate chef Mike Fuller adds parsley to the classic mixture, chills it and coats it in flour, egg wash and panko breadcrumbs before frying it.
“You have to control the temperature when scooping it out,” he said, noting that the balls lose their shape if not kept chilled. He serves eight of them with a chipotle-ranch sauce for $8.
“They consistently are No. 1 or No. 2 in appetizer sales,” he said — either just ahead of or right behind the chain’s popular Ahi Tuna Tacos.
Pimiento cheese fritters also are offered at Firefly in Washington, D.C., where chef de cuisine Todd Wiss serves them with tomato jam and bacon marmalade.
Wiss’ version incorporates brioche crumbs with Cheddar cheese, mayonnaise, pimientos, scallions, cayenne pepper, hot sauce, garlic powder, salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce.
He shapes them into balls using an ice cream scoop, freezes them and then dips them in a finely milled flour, an egg yolk wash and finally panko breadcrumbs.
He fries them and sells them for $12 per order of three.
Christophe Poteaux, chef-owner of Bastille in Alexandria, Va., makes a fried appetizer that’s more substantial than your average fritter by using beignet batter.
Using the recipe of his pastry chef, business partner and wife Michelle, he makes a batter of eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, parsley, chives, lemon zest and lime zest. He adds coarsely chopped seafood — currently rock shrimp, although he sometimes includes other seafoods, including crawfish, calamari, oysters or lobster — and uses an ice cream scoop to drop them into 350-degree oil.
“It’s still slightly moist on the inside but crunchy on the outside,” he said.
He sells four pieces for $11. He currently serves it with a garlic aïoli, but he might add more spice to the sauce this winter.
“It’s an appetizer we’ve served for the past six years,” he said. “If we take it off the menu, we’ll probably get a riot.”
Taking the opposite approach, Chris Hastings, chef-owner of Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham, Ala., is making a fritter with less breading and more filling.
One of his favorite fritters is made with corn and shrimp, although he said he occasionally substitutes blue crab for shrimp.
He combines the seafood with corn kernels; diced red, yellow and poblano peppers; and scallions. He chills that mixture and seasons it with salt, pepper and cayenne pepper before adding flour mixed with a little baking powder — just to coat the shrimp and vegetables.
He refrigerates that for half an hour and then folds in whipped egg whites before frying it in 350-degree oil.
Not everything made into fritters these days is based on Southern tradition, however. Craig Deihl, chef of Cypress in Charleston, S.C., makes kimchi fritters to serve with his crispy pork belly.
Deihl makes his own kimchi, which he has been serving with tuna tartare.
“It’s hard to make a small batch of kimchi,” he said. “After the first week it’s pretty good, but after six weeks it’s phenomenal, so we always make more than we need,” he said.
But that meant he needed to find creative things to do with it.
He drew inspiration from a Korean dish of savory kimchi pancakes.
“But we were thinking, ‘We’re Southern; fritters are really more appropriate for us [than pancakes],’” he said.
He simply scoops the batter into 350-degree oil and fries it until it’s “nice and crispy.”
He pulls the dough apart — “that way they don’t come out looking like hush puppies, and you can see the kimchi within it,” he said — and serves it with pork belly with a spicy Korean glaze and hot mustard for $12.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter: @FoodWriterDiary
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