Recently, we, or should I say I since I’ve been doing the bulk of the cooking lately, decided to try and eat less meat and more vegetarian meals. This decision was brought on by a variety of factors from wanting to eat better to saving a bit of money.
The whole process of eating tasty vegetarian meals has been made much easier by Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food
Last week we didn’t really eat any meat during the week and I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything (even if I did make up for this by eating an obscene amount of bbq at Salt Lick over the weekend. For the record, I did feel pretty wretched after eating so much meat coming off the veggie diet). We also watched Food Inc., which furthered our resolve to try and eat less meat. If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favour and watch it to learn about the appalling state of the US food system.
Anyway, these Thai Style Corn Pancakes are a really great savory vegetarian dish that you can make a lunch or dinner out of by pairing them with a green salad. The recipe feeds 4 people at 70 cents per serving, and it is a good way to use up all that fresh corn in season right now.
Thai Style Corn Pancakes, from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food
2 eggs, separated
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1 teaspoon minced fresh chile, or to taste, or hot red pepper flakes to taste
2 cups corn, preferably just stripped from the cobs, but thawed frozen is acceptable
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 to 4 tablespoons, butter or canola oil, as needed
Combine the egg yolks, green onions, chile, corn, soy sauce, and flour in a large bowl. Mix everything together and season well with salt and pepper.
Beat the egg whites in a different bowl until they are stiff and form peaks. Slowly and gently fold the egg whites into the corn mixture. You want the whites to be loosely folded in with the rest of the ingredients so they do not lose any of their airiness.
Heat the butter or oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When the butter or oil is hot, spoon in pancake-sized dollops into the pan, around 4 to 6 at a time.
Cook each pancake until they are nicely browned on one side, around 3 to 5 minutes, and then turn and brown on the other side. Add additional butter or oil as needed in between each batch until you have cooked all of your corn mixture. Serve the pancakes immediately with a squeeze of fresh lime juice.
looks super yum yum! i’m really enjoying all these veg recipes.