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September 15, 2011Refrigerator Gold: Leftover Corn Cakes and Chile Sauce
I once knew a couple who, after every meal, dumped all of their leftover food down the drain. They’d pile up the dishes by the sink and use whatever handy utensil nearby to cast off the food. It didn’t matter what it was, how much it cost, how much time it took to make. Then, without blinking an eye, one of them turned on the garbage disposal. Away their meals went down the drain.
It always made me uncomfortable, if not somewhat angry, that they wasted so much food – especially when I’d made it. I was raised in a family where we saved every scrap to enjoy at the next meal. My mother’s approach to cooking was to prepare more than we could all eat because to her, leftovers were a bankable asset. They saved her time as there would be one less dish or meal to prepare in the future. After all, she is the woman who loves to cook industrial quantities of food and keeps two freezers in her home. (See "My Mother's Kitchen Quirks" for details!)
The other day, I realized that the food-wasting couple probably just didn’t know the potential of leftovers. They were not good cooks so they didn’t see the value of saving something for the next meal. They didn’t know what to do with the stuff and may not have even known how to reheat it well.
When I am cooking, I often think of how I’ll use it for another meal. That is, I’m already planning how I can repurpose leftovers.
A case in point is these corn cakes that I made for lunch the other day. Daniel Tran, whom I wrote about recently, gifted me a box of organic produce that included 4 large ears of corn. My husband and I boiled off the corn to grill and cut off kernels for a salad. We still had a good cup of corn.
While I was making that salad, I thought of Vietnamese corn and coconut fritters that I used to make. The recipe is in Into the Vietnamese Kitchen and calls for uncooked corn and deep frying. But what if I just combined the cooked kernels with other leftover bits in the fridge – a couple slices of steak and wedges of grilled zucchini – to create a mixture that I’d panfry as little corn cakes?
From making the corn and coconut fritters, I knew that the mixture had to bind (stick together) so I applied the same kind of techniques: Pulse the kernels in the mini food processor and then mix in some flour, cornstarch, and egg. I needed some bright green zip and chopped up dill and cilantro. Then I added salt and pepper to taste.
Finally, I used two tablespoons to shape the mixture into little patties and panfried them in a skillet. I usually ate the Viet corn fritters with Sriracha hot sauce but decided to pair these with Thai sweet chile sauce for a change.
The result is what you see at the top of the page. While these corn cakes are not like the fritters of my past, they were totally tasty. All it takes to cook on the fly is applying some foundational food know-how. And you get that know-how from lots of cooking and eating.
RECIPE
Panfried Corn Cakes and Chile Sauce
This is a very flexible recipe. For example, if you are on a gluten-free diet, try substituting rice flour for the all-purpose flour. It should be fine. Vegetarians can just used leftover vegetables with the corn.
Makes 8 corn cakes to serve 2 as a light meal, 4 as a snack
1 brimming to heaping cup cooked corn kernels
1/3 to 1/2 cup of chopped cooked meat, poultry, seafood, or vegetables
1 to 2 tablespoons chopped herbs or green onion
1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 large egg, lightly beaten
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons canola oil
Thai sweet chile sauce or Sriracha chile sauce
1. Put about 3/4 of the corn in a small food processor and pulse to create a coarse texture. Transfer to a bowl or container and add the remaining corn kernels.
2. Add the chopped protein or vegetables and herbs. Stir in the flour and cornstarch to coat, then add stir in the egg. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Heat the oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Use two tablespoons to scoop, shape and scoot off mounds of the corn mixture. Flatten them out a bit into disks that are about 1/2 inch thick. Fry gently, until browned on the underside, about 2 minutes. Don’t check till you can push the corn cake around on the skillet.
Use two spatulas to turn each corn cake. Fry the other side for about 2 minutes, adding extra oil, as needed, until browned.
4. Transfer to a serving plate and offer one of the chile sauces on the side.
Related posts:
My Mother's Kitchen Quirks Mom's obsessions with ice cream scoops and industrial cookingLeftover Panfried Noodles recipePosted in Cooking Tips & Tools, Recipes: All, Recipes: Appetizer and Snack, Recipes: Gluten-Free , Recipes: Vegetable Sides and Pickles, Recipes: Vegetarian | PermalinkReblog (0) | | Digg This | | Comments
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Mmmmm, these look so tasty, especially with the added freshness of the dill & coriander.
I love leftovers, couldn't imagine throwing any good food away. In the unlikely event that we humans of the household didn't get to eat them, our dog, cat or hens would quickly polish them off.
In a semi-related story of waste, I remember being surprised when an American relation told me that her daughter and family didn't eat from normal plates with normal cutlery – they used disposable table clothes, paper plates, plastic cups and plastic cutlery. Then when dinner was over, they gathered everything up in the table cloth and threw it in the bin! Et voila, dinner clean-up done! The mind boggles O_o
P.S Used your Asian Market Shopper app only yesterday to identify Thai basil and Gochu garu/Korean hot pepper powder. So handy to whip my phone out and compare pictures and original names. :)
Posted by:Lisa |September 16, 2011 at 12:05 AMI have a friend who does that with leftover food, and it makes me panicky. I'm the queen of repurposing.
One of my favorite things to do is to make "hand pies" - whatever's leftover stuffed in some pizza/calzone dough or a short crust dough. Maybe add some parm cheese to it. Bake. Eat. Also do a lot of Thai fried rice - leftover meat/veg/rice, rice, garlic, chiles, fish sauce, maybe an egg. Mmmmm.....
Posted by:Diane |September 16, 2011 at 06:39 AMcall me lazy or efficient, i've always cooked to have leftovers .. pot roast on sunday, open-face beef sandwiches on tuesday, pasta with beef ragu on thursday - reseasoning each time.
i have friends like yours but i've screamed WAIT! before the crime .. then a brief lesson on what to do with, e.g., a platter of grilled veggies.
quite related:
one nite i was cooking pork chops for a small party at a clean-freak friend's house .. i had just removed the last chop from the pan to the warming platter in the oven .. i turned back to the stove to make my beautiful pan sauce - but no pan there!! .. yes, it was in the sink under running hot water and my friend was happily scrubbing the precious fonde off it.
To me, everything that is fried is delicious to taste. Unfortunately, they are not healthy to our bodies. But occasionally we allow ourselves to eat fried or deep fried foods.
And this is one of the foods I want to eat because it looks so yummy. Or next time when I fry fish paste (ch? cá chiên), I will add corns and herbal. My thinking doesn't tell me if it is good combination or not until I try. How about yours?
Posted by:TU DOAN |September 16, 2011 at 10:53 AMOMG -- these are precious stories!
Lisa -- I once did a story on a family of immigrant farmers with 10 kids. They had no dishwasher and ate every meal with disposables. It was a matter of efficiency for them.
Diane -- Love the pizza/calzone idea. Isn't amazing how a bit of leftover food when put on a pizza turns into a 'topping'? Same thing with sliding the bit of food into a tortilla to make a taco on the fly. It does not take much food for us to feed ourselves.
Posted by:Andrea Nguyen |September 16, 2011 at 11:08 AMMaluE: Yep, I have those neat-freak friends too. You kind of feel them cringe when you're about to mess up their kitchen. On the other hand, they're very good at cleanup. In your story, the friend was TOO good at clearing away things. At times like those, I have another drink.
Tu Doan: Fried food is healthier when you make it yourself. Splurge!
Posted by:Andrea Nguyen |September 16, 2011 at 11:10 AMI guess. I know a number of people who just won't eat leftovers. It just makes me want to shake them. How can anyone so callously waste food? This is what's wrong with first world countries.
Posted by:rtuko |September 16, 2011 at 01:39 PMoh andrea, what could i do but reach for my glass of wine! ;-) .. my friend is the sweetest non-cook .. i managed to teach her later, when i was calmer, how sauces are made from what's left in the pan.
hey, how about lettuce wraps for leftovers!
Posted by:maluE |September 16, 2011 at 03:48 PMWhen I was growing up, I did not like leftovers. I never wasted food, but I wouldn't eat much at a meal with leftovers. It wasn't until I was on my own that I discovered that leftovers are good, and make a quick meal when reheated in the microwave.
Posted by:Sandy |September 16, 2011 at 06:52 PMI never throw anything away. I call myself the frugal french housewife. I repurpose everything. It's my job.
Posted by:Pamela Folse |September 16, 2011 at 09:55 PMproducts kitchen good thank you
Posted by:soonda44 |September 17, 2011 at 01:11 AMYes! It bothers me when people throw out perfectly good leftovers, too. Or when people order much more than they can eat at restaurants or even buffets and don't think twice about tossing it.
Posted by:William |September 17, 2011 at 09:25 PMhi andrea. first off, i love reading your blog.
leftovers: i have an uneasy relationship with it, simply because my mother saves them in the fridge for eternity until someone finally eats them or it spoils. she is buddhist so she does not like the idea of waste.
as much as i hate to agree with her, my mother's has somehow rubbed off on me. i now try to eat most, if not all of everything i make. it is harder when you only cook for yourself and one recycles the same dish for the entire week. and i also understand that food costs money. my money as a consumer as well as the people who produced it for me i.e. farmer/fisherman/grocer etc. our appetites feed an industry.
i have trouble reconciling the fact that with every bowl of rice i don't eat or with every plate of takeway that goes rancid, someone else in the world goes hungry. i understand completely that perhaps my takeaway of fried noodles might not be their idea of the perfect meal but it still makes me feel guilty nonetheless.
i also realise that sometime, to use up leftovers, you end up expanding more energy (i.e. incorporating it into another meal) that you have to ask yourself is it worth it in the first place?
i don't admit to have a solution to this. i believe it boils down to personal preferences and common sense, each to his own. i used to cringe when my friends didn't even bother to take their pizzas away when they had only eaten a mere quarter of it. blasphemous but it continues to happen.
and i have lived in countries where you pay for every packet of ketchup that comes with your fish and chips.
i guess the moral of the story is: waste not want not?
Looks so good, I will hve to give it a try. I never throw away left overs. I cook for one and I usally have left overs for a couple of meals. Thank you for sharing your recipes. I will have to come back and check for more.
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