Fritters

These crisp, light fritters taste like nothing but fresh lobster and sweet corn.

"These are not your usual fritters," says cookbook author Yotam Ottolenghi. His are pancake-like, packed with cauliflower and spiced with cinnamon, cumin and turmeric. As a dipping sauce, he serves lime-spiked Greek yogurt.

Richard Betts became an expert at frying squash and sage leaves when he lived in Tuscany 20 years ago, using a batter with just two ingredients: flour and club soda.

Chefs Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson of Los Angeles's Kismet make these freekeh fritters as a playful take on Italian arancini. To get the creamy-chewy texture just right, they cook the lightly roasted green wheat called freekeh risotto-style, adding the water gradually while stirring the grain continuously.

"When I was a kid, my mom fried zucchini fritters when I got home from school; I would steal a couple while they were still hot," says Didem Senol. "My grandmother fried them, too; she'd make the patties thin and dense. When I started cooking, I decided to work on my childhood recipe. I added herbs and feta and reduced the amount of flour to make them fluffier." The fritters are terrific on their own or dipped into the yogurt-cucumber sauce.

If you go to St. Croix, Trinidad, Jamaica and some of the other large islands in the Caribbean, you can still find stalls serving these fritters--just look for the markings of an old taxi or bus stop on a lonely stretch of road, and you'll see vendors serving passengers their fill of salt cod fritters. The sauce is one I found years ago, and it goes superbly with all types of fried seafood, especially fritters. -Andrew Zimmern

Sweet corn kernels take two different forms in these crispy cakes. Half the corn is pureed into the batter; the other half is sauteed with shiitake and onion to give the fritters crunch.

When chef Jimmy Bradley opened the Red Cat in NYC in 1999, he wanted to combine an Italian-American sensibility with his own New England upbringing. The Red Cat Cookbook highlights the inventive, uncomplicated and always memorable recipes from Bradley's restaurant. These light, crisp fritters include bits of chopped scallops in a batter made with clam broth and pilsner--the perfect expression of Bradley's New England tastes.

Mario Batali's Edible Garden, at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, is named for two of his restaurants: the Otto Pizza Garden and the Babbo Beets, Garlic and Greens Garden. Cooking demonstrations feature recipes like Batali's fritters with zucchini and rocambole garlic.

Chef Melissa Kelly of Primo, in Rockland, Maine, features these fritters in spring. They taste like sophisticated doughnuts, especially when accompanied by Strawberry-Rhubarb Compote.

Gluten-free or not, these fritters are perfect: fluffy, light and just sweet enough.

Gale Gand, an F&W Best New Chef 1994, is the executive pastry chef and a partner at Tru in Chicago. She's also the host of Food Network's Sweet Dreams. Her follow-up to the cookbook Gale Gand's Short + Sweet is a collection of recipes from Tru. Gand got this recipe from her mother-in-law, Vita Seidita; the fritters are also good sprinkled with cinnamon sugar or dipped in jelly.