Conch Fritters!
Hello, hungry people.
Yes, we get lots of requests here at Bob’s Diner. And some of you have been asking me to share my recipe for conch fritters, which just happen to be the Second-Best Conch Fritters in the Universe.
Who makes the best? Read on. …
***
WHEN I WAS IN THE BAHAMAS a few years ago and had some time to kill in Nassau before the flight home, I hired a cab and told the driver: “Take me to find some conch fritters.”
The driver’s name was George LaMont. The card he handed me said: “For all your Bahamas taxi pleasures, call on George LaMont, the Passenger’s Friend.” He had a boom box swinging from the rearview mirror. And the backseat of his taxi was unlike the backseat of any taxi I have ever seen. From the floor, halfway to the headliner, it was filled with … shoes. All kinds of shoes. Dress shoes. Sneakers. Sandals. So many shoes I have never seen outside of a shoe shop, let alone a car.
Occasionally, George LaMont would pull up to groups of locals standing on street corners. They would stick their heads in the windows and look at the shoes. Then they would step back and George LaMont would drive away. I can only assume that he was trying to interest the locals in buying some shoes. We didn’t talk about it. But for all I know, in addition to being the Passenger’s Friend, George LaMont could also be the owner of the World’s Only Mobile Shoe Museum.
Eventually we arrived at the conch fritter stand. It consisted of an old woman sitting under a tarpaulin on an otherwise empty lot along a back street in a shabby part of town. A cast iron frying pan filled with grease sat atop a Coleman stove. As a source for conch fritters, this place appeared eminently promising.
The woman looked at me.
“Five dollar bag?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” I said. It made me think back to my college days and scoring pot, but we needn’t get into that here.
The woman turned on the stove and started cooking. When she finished I was holding a medium-sized grocery bag filled with conch fritters. Must have been three dozen of them. Grease fairly oozed from the bottom of the bag. Large chunks of conch meat jutted out of each fritter. I ate one.
It had long been my quest to find the Best Conch Fritters in the Universe. And at that precise moment I knew that I had finally succeeded. In the presence of such perfection I could not speak. I smiled at the woman. She smiled back. Hers was what you might call a beatific smile. She knew she had the Best Conch Fritters in the Universe. Nothing more needed to be said.
George kinda ruined the moment when he asked the fritter woman if she wanted to look at some shoes. She told him, no, she had work to do. Then she turned off the stove and sat down. She was already napping by the time we drove off.
***
On the way to the airport, George was too busy helping me eat conch fritters to stop and let anyone examine his backseat full of shoes. Even then, we couldn’t finish them all. Along with a tip, I gave George a couple of fritters for the road.
“Anything to declare?” asked the customs agent as I was getting ready to exit the Bahamas.
“Conch fritters,” I said, holding up the bag, which by this time was translucent with grease.
“They cannot leave the country,” the customs agent said.
“Fine by me,” I said.
I ate the last half dozen fritters while I was standing there. The customs agent said, no, thank you, he didn’t care for any. But he was nice enough to get rid of the empty bag for me.
***
Ever since then I’ve been trying to duplicate those conch fritters. I’ll never reach perfection, but we all need something to strive for, don’t we?
I think the secret to the old woman in Nassau’s conch fritters must have been in that cast iron pan frying pan with its years of oil-and-fritter residue.
The Second-Best Conch Fritters in the Universe
(Makes about 3 dozen)
2 cups conch meat, pounded and diced (about one pound)
2 cups self-rising flour
2 eggs
1 onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced
1 tablespoon of your favorite hot sauce
About 1/2 cup milk
Salt and pepper to taste
Peanut oil
Sauce
½ cup mayonaise
3 tablespoons ketchup
Couple of dashes Worcestershire sauce
Juice of one lime
Hot sauce to taste
The secret to conch is you have to pound it before you can eat it. So take a ball peen hammer and beat the conch on a cutting board until the thick membrane breaks and the conch flattens out like veal scaloppini. Then slice it into good-sized chunks. In too many fritters—the kind you get at most restaurants—they process the conch into minuscule bits and it might as well not even be there. But these are fritters with substance.
Mix together all the ingredients, heat the peanut oil in a cast-iron skillet and fry spoon size balls of batter until they are brown and crunchy. While they’re frying you can make the sauce. Just mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.
Then there’s nothing left to do but dip and eat.
You’re welcome.
****
And just down the road … Scotty’s Landing, which had decent fritters, but it’s gone now. Dammit.
Hi Bob
Where can you buy conch meat? In the day before harvesting-conch-ban in Florida, I had a great spot to snorkel up a bucket off the 7-Mile Bridge, below Marathon. On my first go I knew enough to punch a hole in the shell's back end to release the suction, but rasslin' out the animal left my hands covered with slime so thick and resistant to removal that I ultimately resorted to a scrub with crushed shell at the Bahia Honda campground. And not understanding the pounding process, that was it for me and conch fritters. So, your direction for fresh exotic seafood procurement will be greatly appreciated. Best, Byron