There are many reasons Ifeel at home in the UK, but if I were asked to pinpoint the moment I knew I'd arrived, itmight well be when Irealised the British shared my love of fritters. (Iprefer sweet fruit or veg inalight, crisp coat, rather than more stodgy alternatives, but still.)
That said, my first close encounter with cooking fritters wasn't exactly stress-free. I was in the pastry section of a busy London restaurant where we had to make 60-plus apple fritters every service, and Ihad to plate each one with a perfect quenelle of clotted cream and a light dusting of cinnamon and star anise sugar. Needless to say, this initiation was heavy on the burns and blisters, and was a great test of my passion for fritters, but it's one Ireckon Ipassed with flying colours.
My colleague Tara swears that the best fritter to be had in the British Isles is at the Aldeburgh fish and chip shop on the Suffolk coast. There at the bottom of the menu, below the sides of mushy peas and gherkins, is the cheapest and cheeriest option of all: pineapple fritter. Though it's probably best not to make a habit of eating deep-fried tropical fruit, the combination of flavours and textures is a very seductive one.
A slightly more salubrious, not to mention healthy, way of giving those same fruits an upgrade is to pair them with spices. The clove notes in banana, say, mean it goes brilliantly with cardamom – try it in a soothing, Greek yoghurt raita with a pinch of dried chilli. It's those same notes that make banana work so well with coffee, too: both have a floral, clovey element – bitter, sour and sweet all at the same time. The more obvious banana pairings of vanilla or cinnamon, meanwhile, are taken care of by breads and cakes (the great redeemers of past-it bananas), muffins, brownies and ice-cream.
As for pineapple, it's far more versatile than you might think, and certainly merits wider use than in Hawaiian pizzas and piña coladas and on cheesy co*cktail sticks. Old-school though those combinations are, they endure because they work, so let's take these classic pairings, look farther afield for inspiration and drag the pineapple out of the 80s.
InMexico, they have this amazing street snack, tacos al pastor, for which salty, spiced pork is topped with pineapple and spit-roasted. As it cooks, the pineapple juice flows over the pork, tenderising the meat and creating a caramelised crust. Yum! Or head east to Vietnam, where the classic dipping sauce, mam nem, is made bymixing thick, unstrained fish sauce with pulverised pineapple, chilli, sugar, garlic and lime. It's unbelievably good on grilled fish.
Strained ricotta with banana fritters and maple syrup
Yes, this requires some forward planning – the ricotta balls need to hang in the fridge for three days – but the total prep and cooking time is short and, like the end result, deliciously sweet. Serves four.
250g ricotta
120g crème fraîche
Seeds scraped from ½ vanilla pod
80g egg whites (ie, from 2 large eggs)
100g caster sugar
Salt
For the tempura batter
65g plain white flour
65g cornflour
15g desiccated coconut
200ml cold soda water
Ice
To finish
Sunflower oil, for frying
2 medium bananas, sliced on a diagonal into 8cm long x 2cm batons
1 tbsp lime juice
4 tsp maple syrup
50g macadamia nuts, toasted and roughly crushed
Three days ahead, put the ricotta, crème fraîche and vanilla in a bowl, and beat until smooth. Add a pinch of salt and set aside. Whisk the egg whites and sugar until stiff, then gently fold into the creams. Tip out the mixture into the centre of aclean muslin or J-cloth, wrap into aball and secure tightly with string. Slot a chopstick through the loop ofstring and lay the chopstick horizontally over a container that's deep enough to let the ball hang free – this will catch the liquid that will drip out – and refrigerate.
Two days later, divide the mixture into four balls of about 50g each, and place each one in a separate clean muslin or J-cloth. Twist these tightly, tie with string and hang, as before, with the aid of a chopstick. Refrigerate for another 12 to 24 hours. Before serving, gently twist each ball again, to extrude any last vestiges of liquid, wipe dry and remove the balls from their cloths.
Now you are ready to make the batter. Put the flours and coconut ina large bowl. Whisk in the soda water, stirring constantly, until the mix is smooth and runny, then sit the bowl over ice in the fridge and leave for 45minutes.
Pour enough oil into a medium saucepan so that it comes 5cm up the sides, and place over a medium-high heat. To test that the oil is the right temperature, put in a few drops of batter: if they sink to the bottom, then bounce straight back up with large bubbles, it's ready. Dip a couple of banana batons in the batter and lower into the oil. Fry for two to three minutes, until crisp, remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to a kitchen paper-lined plate. Repeat with the remaining bananas and batter. Serve the fritters with the ricotta balls, a squeeze of lime, a drizzle of maple syrup and a sprinkling of nuts.
Romaine, pineapple and gorgonzola salad
The dressing in this is shamelessly nicked from one of the chefs I most admire, Nancy Silverton, whose TheMozza Cookbook is a must-have. Serves four.
½ large pineapple, peeled, cored and sliced into 3mm-thick rounds
½ tsp caster sugar
200g romaine lettuce leaves, torn into 5cm pieces
50g watercress
50g walnuts, broken
100g celery sticks, sliced diagonally into 2mm pieces, plus any leaves
1 granny smith apple, quartered, cored and cut into 2mm slices
For Nancy Silverton's gorgonzola dressing
40g gorgonzola dolce
1 tbsp sherry vinegar
100ml Greek yoghurt
20ml buttermilk
½ tsp lemon juice
½ tsp chopped thyme leaves
1 garlic clove, crushed
Salt and black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
Heat the oven to 150C/300F/gas mark 2. Lay the pineapple slices on a parchment-lined baking tray, sprinkle over the sugar and roast for an hour – some parts of the pineapple will be crisper and browner than others. Remove, set aside until cool, then tear each slice into quarters.
For the dressing, put the cheese and vinegar in a bowl and whisk until smooth. Add the yoghurt, buttermilk, lemon juice, thyme, garlic, a third of a teaspoon of salt and some black pepper. Whisk againand set aside.
Put the pineapple, romaine, watercress, walnuts, celery and apple in a serving bowl, pour the oilover the top and toss gently. Spoon the dressing over the salad without stirring (it looks better this way), take the bowl to the table, stirvery gently and serve.
