Corndogs

With one sentence, I morphed into my mother.

‘If you’re still hungry, eat an apple’.

It’s something I’ve been saying quite a bit lately- often to myself, though I  think I even let it slip into the last line of the post previous to this one.

It was The Hungry One who finally turned to me and said ‘where did that come from?’

The answer is exactly the same place as my preference for toasted ham and cheese sandwiches, dislike of crowded restaurants with hard floors, appreciation for Nina Simone  and a gleeful smile that reveals the top ledge of my gum.

As I’m creeping closer to shepherding this now-ear-of-corn-sized-stowaway into the world, I can sense I’m becoming more and more like my own mum.

If that was possible.

Though I have very few qualms about this for stowaway.

If her mode of parenthood could be encapsulated in a quote, it’s comes straight from Corinthians. It’s patient and kind- heck, I just hope that over time a few more smudges of those traits bloom in my genetic code.

The slow morph is also present in what I’m craving-  as these weeks trickle past I hunger for more and more Earl Grey tea, muesli, cakes that host stone fruits, rhubarb and almonds and soothing bowls of pasta and risotto.

Her stamp is also present in the way I see myself feeding the stowaway.

We grew up in a kitchen blessed with rectangular terracotta tiles and distinct lines drawn around food. I’m appreciating these more and more as I grow up. Sugar crusted cereals were constricted to one holiday fun pack, selected with joy at the start of summer holidays. You had to be strategic about which day you wanted to celebrate with the cocoa pops. Neither the fridge nor pantry were host to fizzy drinks or crisps. Fun sized chocolate bars were consumed only on skiing holidays, as an incentive to get my feeble feet down a cold mountain. I was 22 before I ever knew what KFC tasted like (I never felt the need to repeat the experience).  And when we went to brave the Royal Easter Show, the great highlight of the day was a toffee apple. Certainly, certainly not a corn dog.

This was not a life of deprivation. There was always a tub of Peters vanilla ice cream in the freezer and a packet of frozen waffles and Cottee’s maple-flavoured topping around for a Sunday night treat. If you were starving there was an occasional recommendation to slice a banana and pour some cream over the top- curious, but incredibly satisfying. And in our lunch boxes there were frequently homemade coconut, oat and cocoa bars, which emerged from a flour scabbed page of the Australian Women’s Weekly Biscuits Book.

I know that I’ve still got a couple of months before the transformation is complete.

So in this week of corn, it felt about right to indulge in something that won’t often be on the menu for The Stowaway.

I’ve certainly tried to clean up the fair ground indulgence of a corn dog. The sausage in the centre is a good quality chippolata from The Ginger Pig (a good banger will be worth the few extra bucks here). The batter is largely sweetened with fresh sweetcorn, that’s blitzed and blended with cornmeal/polenta. There is a twinge of extra sugar in there, but you could certainly leave it out. And there’s a slightly adult zip from a sprinkling of cayenne.

But this is still a sausage that’s dunked in batter. That’s designed to be fried and eaten off a stick. So perhaps just one each should do. And if you’re still hungry afterwards, you can always eat an apple.

 Corndogs

 Makes 6 corn dogs.

Equipment

6 wooden skewers. High sided pan for frying. Stick blender/food processor. Tall glass/cannister for dipping.  Paper towel.

Shopping/foraging

6 small, good quality sausages (chippolatas are good)
1 corn cob
1 egg
1/2 cup of polenta/corn meal
1/2 cup of plain flour
1/ tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
Pinch of cayenne pepper

Sunflower oil, for deep frying

Here’s how we roll

1) Preheat the oven to 180C/350 F.

2) Place sausages on a grill and cook in the oven for 20 minutes, turning over after ten minutes so they brown on all sides. Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature.

3) Cleave the corn off the cobb using a sharp knife.

4) Place the corn and the egg in a bowl and use a stick blender (or place in a food processor) and blitz until largely smooth.

6) Sift in the dry ingredients and fold together to form a batter.

7) Insert a skewer into your cooked and cooled sausages and transfer your batter to a tall glass. Dip the cooled sausages into the centre of the  batter-filled-glass. You may have to use your fingers to help encourage the batter to stick all the way along the sausages.

 

8) Place the battered sausages on a plate in the fridge for 10 minutes to firm up.

9) Place enough oil in a high sided pan so it comes at least an inch and a half up the sides. Heat until it reads 180C/350 F on a thermometer.

10) Trim your sticks so they are short enough to allow the corndogs to easily lie lengthwise in the hot oil. Fry the corndogs for five minutes, (turning them carefully after two and a half), until the batter is crisp and brown.

11) You can keep the corndogs warm in the oven until it’s time to serve. Dunk them in some tomato sauce/ketchup and serve with mustard. The Hungry One reports that they go particularly well with a beer.

 

Forty Weeks of Feasting

Each week mad websites and baby books will tell you how big your baby now is in comparison to a seed, fruit or vegetable. It starts as a poppy seed and goes from there. To make this process a little more palatable, join me as I bake my way through. Here’s the journey so far.

Week 19 Mango Pudding. Recipe here