On the last Funk Friday on WSHA – the great jazz station at Shaw University in Raleigh – they featured the music of the late Isaac Hayes. Yes, they played “Shaft,” and, yes, I danced around the kitchen to it, badly imitating the high-pitched backup girls. Funk Friday, starting at 4 p.m., is a great show, especially for cooking to as the weekend is so close you can touch it. You should check it out – you’ll get your minimum weekly requirement of James Brown.
I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Hayes was found dead of a stroke next to a running treadmill, bless his heart. I always suspected exercise was fatal. Should it be my fate to be found dead next to something, I assure you it will not be a piece of recently used exercise equipment, but perhaps a pile of Lindt Bittersweet 70-percent cacao chocolate bar wrappers.
The funk was inspiring me to use a handful of okra from the CSA box and some fresh corn from the farmers market to make some fritter-like things. Corn kernels, chopped okra, red onion, cayenne, salt and pepper, some egg, flour and cornmeal, fried in vegetable oil to a crispy goldenness. Fortunately, the fact that a house got hit by lightning about three doors away that afternoon didn’t affect my power supply.
There are no photos of these fried cakes because my husband and I ate them all up. They were some baaad muthers.
Can’t resist, Moose. They were some baaaad muthers. But you couldn’t shut your mouth.
I’m just talking about fritters.
Hey, we can dig it.
Oh, Moose. I’m so lucky to be living in Riviera Beach where okra grows in my backyard Winn Dixie (big grin). I can make them fresh!
I shouldn’t complain — I do have coconuts, bananas, ackee and macadamias growing in my lil’ patch of seaside here. Those make a different kind of fritter — best dispatched with a glass of my pink rum punch watchin’ the boaters at the marina across the street try to reload their boats after a day of alleged fishing. Great sport, that.
Sigh: Still, hard for this little Southerner to get her Dixie fix now and then. Your blog does it for me, and your tune references make my music guy happy, too.