Betty Botter bought a bit of butter.
“But,” said she, “this butter's bitter.
If I put it in my batter,
It will make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter
That would make my batter better.”
So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter
(Better than her bitter butter)
And she put it in her bitter batter
And made her bitter batter a bit better.
I've grown up with crumb fried food, usually fish fillets, and find that there are two problems: When you need them, there are no bread crumbs in the kitchen. If you dry bread slices and store them, they go off and smell funny —which I've learnt to circumvent by heat-drying bread in the microwave and powdering it for instant crumbs — but the other problem is insurmountable. Bread crumb coating drinks oil. No matter how much oil in the pan, and no matter how hot, crumbs soak up oil and scatter a fine powder that burns and ruins the oil, so you have to keep cleaning the pan and changing the oil.
Panko is the other thing. Hip restaurant menus with Japanese pretensions offer crunchy panko coating on their fried foods and I discovered that it's just a variety of flaky bread crumb. The Japanese first learnt to make bread from the Portuguese, and the word panko comes from the Portuguese pao, for bread and ko from the Japanese for flour, crumb or powder. Panko is made by passing an electric current through bread dough, producing bread which has no crust, and has a lighter, airier texture than the usual ingredient for breading.
But crumb-fried fish, with or without tartar sauce, passé though it may be, is delicious because the outer crust is crisp and crunchy, while the fish inside is cooked and just turns opaque in the time it takes to fry the crumbs golden brown. A better coating is fritter batter, because it gives crispness minus the oily gulps.
Have it hot
Fritters can be made with choux pastry, yeast dough or waffle batter, and possibly of Saracen origin, brought to the West by the Crusaders. Depending on the inner ingredients, they can be served as an hors d'oeuvres, main course or dessert. They must be fried in plenty of oil because fritters sink to the bottom when first slipped into the oil — they then rise to the surface once the heat has cooked the batter. Fritters are almost always served hot, with a sprinkling of fine salt or sugar. Batter is a semi-liquid preparation of eggs, milk and flour, whose proportions vary depending on the end use. Lighter batters are made by replacing some or all of the milk with water, and the Japanese use beer for tempura.
When we deep fry little pieces of vegetables, fish or fruit to make fritters — or larger ones like fish fillets —the batter coats the food. The texture and thickness are crucial: It must be thick enough to stick to the food, and yet not so thick as to become heavy, when all you taste is the batter. It should just form a thin, crisp shell around the food, preventing the scorching which would come from direct frying, and containing and sealing in the moisture and flavour.
Our pakora or bhaji uses water with chickpea flour, besan, and rice flour in the East. We don't use leavening, but some homes add flavours like chilli powder, garlic and dried fenugreek leaves (kasuri methi).
And then there is batter for sweet dessert fritters. It includes a little salt, but the taste is ever so slightly sweet. More sugar would burn and darken the fritter, so the sweetness comes either from the fruit itself or from added sugar sprinkled on top after frying.
SAVOURY FRITTER BATTER
1½ cups sifted flour
2¼ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
1 egg white
2 egg yolks
¾ cup milk
1½ tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp grated lemon peel
Sift flour with baking powder and salt. In small bowl, with electric or rotary hand beater, beat egg white until stiff peaks form. In another, larger, bowl, with same beater, beat egg yolks, oil and milk until smooth. Gradually add flour mixture, beating until smooth. Gently fold egg white into batter, along with grated lemon peel.
TEMPURA
Batter
¾ cup beer
¾ cup flour
¾ tsp salt
6 shrimps, 6 asparagus spears, 2 bell peppers cut into rings
Vegetable oil to deep fry
Soya sauce for dipping
In a bowl, whisk flour into beer. Add salt. In a large heavy bottomed pan heat 2 inches oil till hot but not smoking. Working in batches of 3 or 4 pieces, dredge shrimp, bell pepper rings, and asparagus spears in batter to coat completely, letting excess drip off, and fry, turning, until golden, about 3 minutes. Transfer fried tempura to absorbent paper towel with tongs to drain and season with salt.
BASIC SWEET FRITTER BATTER
Makes 1½ cups
1 cup sifted flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
2 eggs
½ cup milk
1 tsp vegetable oil
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp grated lemon peel
Sift flour with baking powder and salt. Stir in sugar until well combined. In separate bowl, beat together remaining ingredients. Gradually add flour mixture, beating until smooth.
Dip, coat and fry 4-5 large apples, peeled, cored and sliced into ½ inch thick rings or 3 bananas cut diagonally and sprinkled with lemon juice and grated nutmeg. Sprinkle hot apple fritters powdered cinnamon.
This column in the print edition of the Magazine dated February 26, 2012, has some inadvertent errors in the ingredient section. The lapse is regretted.
