Daring Cooks: Cornmeal

Rachael of pizzarossa was our August 2012 Daring Cook hostess and she challenged us to broaden our knowledge of cornmeal! Rachael provided us with some amazing recipes and encouraged us to hunt down other cornmeal recipes that we'd never tried before – opening our eyes to literally 100s of cuisines and 1000s of new-to-us recipes!

Now that the Olympics (and my MCAT) is done my life felt a bit empty- until I realized I have to get started on my med-school applications. Damn it. Talk about stressful! I want to just close my laptop and hope it sorts itself out. Can't you hire people to do this for you? I wish.

The best way to ease stress? Cooking. And this month's Daring Cook's challenge provided the best distraction. I love cornmeal- so many good things come from it, like cornbread, Jamaican patties, Jamaican festivals, Chicago pizza.... Etcetc. It's such an awesome ingredient- I was totally excited to use it in this month's Daring Cook's challenge.

At first I wanted to do a twist on cornbread, but then decided to do something more along the lines of Jamaican cuisine. At first I wanted to try making Jamaican festivals- deep fried fritter thing. Absolutely delicious. We had them last time I was in Jamaica and my friend and I became totally obsessed. However, when I tried to make them it didn't come out so well so I decided to try something a bit less tricky (for now).

So my mom and I settled on doing a corn fritter- stuffed full of jerk chicken. Hells. Yeah. Stupidly easy to make, tasty and filling- a great Sunday brunch with just enough spice. For something thrown together willy-nilly it came out pretty great, if I do say so myself.

Jerk Chicken Cornbread Fritters
Makes 6 fritters
Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tsp jerk seasoning
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 eggs
1 tsp salt & pepper
1⁄2 cup buttermilk
3/4 cup jerk chicken (I used this recipe)
1 bunch green onions
2 tbsp oil for frying

Directions
Mix flour, cornmeal, baking powder, jerk seasoning, pepper and salt in a large bowl. In another bowl, combine eggs, butter, and buttermilk. Add to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Fold in the jerk chicken and green onions. Divide into 6 patties.

Heat a skillet over medium high heat. Fry each patty until golden brown- about 3-4 minutes a side. Drain on a paper towel. Serve hot with your favourite topping (I suggest mayo + hot sauce). Enjoy!