#76 - Polenta, Spring Onion, Kimchi and Fritters + My House Reno Learnings
Hello Feeder gang!
Before I get going with the meat of the newsletter, I have a very fun announcement. You’ll be able to eat my food all summer long in London without having to buy a ticket!
I have curated a chunk of the menu at Setlist, a glorious spot on the terrace at Somerset House that is open now until the end of summer. Expect smoked red leicester and chive beignets, slow roasted tomatoes on toast with walnut cream, sausage, potato and taleggio pizzettes, and much, much more. There will also be food from Ope Odutayo of Future Plate, showing off the fabulous flavours of Africa and the Caribbean (I tried some burgers on the tasting day, and you will love them), and Mexican food from Andrea and Laura of Masafina. Not only that, there will also be soft serve and sorbets by Happy Endings.
Now, onto this week’s recipe for a Spring Onion, Kimchi and Polenta Fritter, which is so crispy and packed with flavour. What I’d like to eat most lunchtimes, really. My kitchen is still out of action, so these were tested from my coffee table, but this didn’t impact how much I enjoyed them at all.
I’ll also be writing about my biggest learnings from my house renovation journey, which has turned into a much larger project than we originally anticipated! We moved into our Victorian terrace a couple of months ago, and it is very much still a work in progress (in that there is literally building work still occurring). To get this week’s recipe and my house goss, become a paid subscriber. It’s fun over here!
Big love,
Sophie x
The Recipe
Polenta, Kimchi and Spring Onion Fritters
I recently ate at Miga in Hackney, a really great Korean restaurant that I mentioned here a few weeks back. There was a kimchi and mung bean pancake (bindaetteok) that we ate there which had a lovely coarseness and sweetness to it - not dissimilar from polenta. It got me thinking about how I could replicate a similar flavour at home using polenta, as I seem to always have some kicking around the cupboard after using it for other things.
I played around with the moisture levels of the batter for a while, and found that by enriching it with fatty liquids (milk and eggs), you get the softest texture on the inside. Most polenta fritter recipes I saw online required you to cook the polenta in liquid, cool it and then refry it, but I found I could get good results much faster than this.
This is in no way an authentic dish, but one I can rustle up easily using ingredients that I normally have in the cupboard. I sadly don’t live very close to an Asian supermarket, so my access to ingredients like gosari are limited. The kimchi in there was great though, so she is staying, along with some big chunks of spring onions, because they are a staple ingredient in bindaetteok, and also bang in season now and really lovely. I’ve even added a bit of cheddar, because I love the sharp, saltiness with kimchi, and it softens the texture of polenta.
Makes 10 fritters