Game Day Snack Week 6 - Mozzarepas!

First, yes, this game day recipe is definitely after the first kick-off, but, well, sorry. My husband and I have some busy busy weekends ahead of us before we have an invasion of the little one, so we were running some errands this morning.

I can guarantee that next week's recipe will be up by Saturday since we are away on Sunday!!

Second, this week's recipe was inspired by the Oyster Festival we went to on Long Island yesterday. I love the Oyster Festival. And don't worry - this recipe has nothing to do with seafood... this was something we ate in the main food court. The food court at the Oyster Festival is usually full of new and different foods that we have never eaten, as well as traditional fair foods like hot dogs and pickles and roasted corn (yum!).

While we were roaming to find some things we never ate, we found polenta fries, which unfortunately we didn't get to try because that food truck was having a problem with the deep fryer. We ate butterscotch chicken wings, which were good until butterscotch got all over you (including in my hair, which did not make me too happy). We also walked past something called "mozzarepas." We had never heard of these, but people were going crazy for them and one woman remarked "these are outrageous," when I inquired as to what they were.

So, what are mozzarepas? Well, they are basically a corn bread grilled cheese, just for an easy explanation. It's 2 pieces of corn patties with melted mozzarella cheese in between. And it was delicious. So we decided to make it for game day.

It was actually hard to find a recipe for these - they are kind of limited on the internet. But, I found this one and it seemed easy enough. I did have to make a few last minute substitutions, only because we didn't have something in the house, but it still turned out just fine.

I used white corn meal instead of yellow because we only had white in the house (not much difference in taste, I had researched this in the past), and I had to omit the ground corn kernels because we didn't have any in the house either, so we just added a little more corn meal instead.

But next time - I will make sure I have some frozen corn to try that out!!

We also added a special touch for some more zing - we have mango habanero jelly in the house so when we put the cheese in the middle, we also added a dab of that jelly. It tasted delicious with the extra added taste!! (But the original version is very tasty as well.)

We also made an original version and dipped it in pasta sauce - YUM!!

Our home made mozzarepas were nothing compared to the pros at the festival, but they were tasty enough to eat at home and serve during a party. Maybe with some more practice I can master the true form of the mozzarepa. At least they were easy to make!!

The whole process took us about 20-25 minutes, so definitely not too shabby!!

The recipe listed below makes 8 patties or 4 sandwiches. We halved it because we were just trying it out.

Ingredients:

1 cup milk
5 tablespoons butter
1 cup frozen corn kernels (we omitted just because we didn't have in the house)
1 cup finely ground yellow corn meal (we used white only because we had that in the house)
1/4 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
mild swiss or mozzarella cheese, sliced

Directions:

Bring the milk to a boil in a small pan, add the butter and let stand and cool slightly.

Grind the frozen corn kernels in a food processor.

In a large bowl, mix the ground corn, corn meal, salt, sugar, flour and shredded mozzarella.

Make a well in the center of the mixture and slowly add the milk and butter mixture. Stir until there are no lumps.

Heat a lightly buttered griddle to medium - spoon the batter on the griddle to form pancakes. (We used our little "perfect pancake" rings - they helped soooo much!)


Cook the pancakes in batches until crispy and golden brown on each side.

Place the sliced cheese on one pancake and cover it with another to make a sandwich. Cook over low heat until the cheese is melted - flip it a few times.

Serve warm and enjoy!!

I am so glad this person at the website above listed this recipe so I had something easy to work off of.