I don’t use a lot of butter in my cooking, but occasionally I just have to go there.

The marriage of fresh in-season corn, butter, eggs, soy and scallions is a thing to be savored and if you are normally vegan, you might consider this a fling worth having.

Just make sure to buy your eggs and butter from happy local animals and the guilt factor—when it comes to mindful consumption—should be sufficiently mitigated.

Be careful who you serve these to, they’ll be trailing around after you like mice after the Pied Piper for the rest of your life after a single bite.

Fresh Corn and Scallion Pancakes

[Authors note: adapted from Mark Bittman’s book How To Cook Everything Vegetarian.]

Serves Four

2 eggs, separated

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup chopped scallion or green onion

1 tsp minced jalapeño or Thai chili or red pepper flakes to taste

2 cups fresh corn just stripped from the cob (great way to make use of leftover corn)

1 t/l soy sauce

1/4 cup all purpose flour

4 t/l butter (or substitute peanut oil)

In a large bowl, combine, egg yolks, chili, corn, soy sauce, scallions, flour, pinch of salt and a generous amount of black pepper (1/2 tsp) and mix well.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

Heat butter or oil in a cast iron or non-stick pan.

Fold egg whites into batter.

When butter or oil is hot (for butter, the foam will disappear), spoon pancake sized dollops of the batter into the pan.

Cook until brown on one side, three-five minutes, then flip.

Serve immediately with an extra few dots of butter on top, a sprinkle of chopped chives or scallions and a few more grains of sea salt.

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Editor: Travis May

Photo:  Wiki Commons