Chilled Mexican Corn Salad

The Background

I have been looking for a side dish that will pair well with Tex-Mex, Southwestern and Southern dishes.  The catering jobs that we take on typically involve either barbeque or tacos.  This side dish pairs well with both and it is equally tasty served warm or cold.  If served with barbeque, the corn salad gives a great alternative to the typical potato salad or coleslaw. 

If you have ever been to a Mexican festival or celebration, you may have stumbled on a booth or food truck selling grilled corn on the cob.  The corn is usually nicely charred, lathered in a creamy, buttery combination of cheese and chili spices, and finished with a squeeze of lime.  The sweet smell of grilled corn with lime and chiles creates an aroma that will be forever locked in your mind.  You won't be able to think about that festival without remembering that aroma, and anytime you pass a vendor selling grilled corn, your ears will immediately perk and your head will swivel to find the source!

We have tried to recreate that experience in a bowl.  I love to serve this dish as a cold side.  The sweet corn and creaminess cools down the palate perfectly after something spicy.  And the bright, fresh citrus keeps the flavors light.  It's a new favorite of mine, and I get great comments when we serve it at our events.

 

The Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter
3 cups corn (about 4 ears, fresh OR 2 cans)
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 clove garlic, grated (or approximately 1 teaspoon of minced garlic)
1 handful cilantro, chopped
1 lime, juice
2 tablespoons Cotija cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoon chili powder to taste
2 teaspoons onion salt

 

Making It Work

1. Melt the butter in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat.  A cast iron skillet works great, if you have one.
2. Add the corn, toss it quickly to coat as much of the corn with the butter as you can.  Once the corn is coated in butter, leave it alone to char, about 6-10 minutes. Set aside to cool.
3. In a medium bowl, stir together the mayonnaise, garlic, lime juice, onion salt, and chili powder to make a smooth dressing.
4. Mix the corn into the dressing, until the corn is well coated.  Once the corn and dressing are mixed, stir in the chopped cilantro and Cotija cheese.
5. To serve, garnish with some hand-torn cilantro, and an additional sprinkle of cheese and chili powder.  This is a great dish to make a day ahead or the morning of the event.  The flavors will deepen as it chills in the refrigerator for a few hours. 

Jalapeno Popper Cornbread

The background

I was thinking through how I wanted to celebrate my birthday this year and had settled on a barbeque dinner.  Never mind that it is early February, here in central Texas, the weather is most definitely indicative of an early spring.  With daytime temperatures in the mid 70’s and flirting with the 80’s, the weather is perfect for firing up the smoker.  In the grand Texas barbeque tradition, dinner would include smoked brisket, pulled pork and sausage.  To compliment the peppery smoked meats, I served pinto beans, grilled corn on the cob, homemade dinner rolls and Jalapeno Popper Cornbread. 

In the off chance that you haven’t been to a backyard barbeque in the last decade or so, jalapeno poppers are bacon wrapped peppers stuffed with cheese and either battered and fried, or grilled.  I am a fan of the grilled variety, myself.  I like the smoky bacon and slight char on the jalapeno pepper.  In order to mimic these qualities in my cornbread, I relied on my favorite cast iron skillet and the all around goodness of rendered bacon fat. 

I am willing to bet that you can get perfectly acceptable results by adding the three pepper popper ingredients to whatever boxed cornbread mix you already use, baked in a casserole pan, but I have to strongly encourage you to take the time to make this recipe from locally sourced ground corn if at all possible.  Using the best bacon you can find definitely won’t hurt either.  The cast iron skillet also delivers on a nice crisp crust on the bread, which can’t be achieved in a glass dish.

No, you won’t find this recipe in anyone’s healthy eating or diet cookbook.  This should be a splurge for sure, so I don’t recommend getting carried away with healthy swaps like using skim milk, turkey bacon, coconut oil or almond flour.  Enjoy this cornbread with a slathering of real butter guilt-free, just don’t eat the whole pan in one sitting.

the ingredients

• 1 Cup Ground Corn Meal (locally sourced and organic)
• 1 Cup All-Purpose Flour (unbleached and organic)
• 1 Tsp. Salt
• 2 Tsp. Baking Powder
• 2 Tbsp. Sugar
• 1 Cup Milk
• 2 Eggs
• 1/4 Canola Oil
• 3 Whole Jalapeno Peppers
• 1 Lb. Smoked Bacon
• 2 Cup Cheddar Cheese, grated (I prefer a Longhorn Style Medium Cheddar)

making it work

1. Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees with a rack in the center position.
2. Slice the bacon into thin pieces and brown in a cast iron skillet.
3. While the bacon is browning, slice the jalapenos into 1/4 inch slices.  You will further dice these in a later step, we just want nice slices so that they cook evenly.
4. When the bacon is browned, remove the bacon to a plate lined with paper towels to remove excess grease.  Pour off most of the bacon grease from the pan, reserving a tablespoon or 2 in the pan.
5. Sauté the sliced jalapenos in the rendered bacon fat until they soften and start to brown.
6. Remove the sautéed peppers from the pan and chop them into small pieces.  Set these aside to be added to the batter.
7. Combine the dry ingredients (corn meal, flour, salt, baking powder, sugar) in a medium size mixing bowl and then stir with a whisk or fork so that they are mixed well.
8. Add the wet ingredients (oil, milk, and eggs) to the dry ingredients and whisk fully incorporate.
9. Stir in the bacon, jalapeno peppers and cheddar cheese.
10. Grease a clean cast iron skillet.  For this purpose, I prefer to use bacon fat, but shortening or vegetable oil will work just fine as well.  I am one of those crazy people that actually keeps rendered bacon fat to use for things like this or for biscuits.
11. Pour the batter into the greased skillet and bake for 30-35 minutes.  When it is done, the top should be lightly brown and firm to the touch.  You should also see nicely browned edges.

notes and observations

I cut my cornbread into 16 pieces.  This means I end up with 4 very small, triangular pieces that really aren’t big enough to serve.  These are of course made entirely for taste-testing, and naturally are void of calories.

Assuming you have to brown the bacon, this recipe should take about an hour from start to finish.  This does reheat well though, so it can certainly be made early.

Shredding cheese from a block really does make a big difference.  If you have abandoned block cheese for the pre-shredded bagged cheese, please reconsider this.  Here’s a challenge, hand grate some cheddar cheese and taste it side by side with the bagged stuff.  I guarantee you will taste a huge difference.  Even without buying expensive artisan cheddar from the cheese counter, if you will just use even the store brand block cheese you will be surprised by the results.  If your not convinced, read the ingredients on the back of the package.  Yuck.

Tomatillo Avocado Salsa

It’s Cinco De Mayo, so it seems fitting to offer this salsa recipe I have been playing with recently.  So eat up!  Happy Cinco De Mayo, everyone!

The Background

Whenever I go to a Mexican restaurant and there is a green salsa, I usually love it, but for some reason I have never tried to make my own.  My grocery store carries tomatillos year round, so access to good fresh produce isn’t the problem.  A couple of weeks ago, I went to my favorite taqueria in Round Rock, where they make their salsas fresh everyday.  I love their green salsa.  I could drink it with a straw, but that might seem a bit inappropriate as I stand there at the salsa bar.  Above the salsas, the restaurant had provided a description of each salsa and their relative heat factor.  As I read the description, which included a list of the ingredients, it finally sunk in.  I am a relatively smart guy, and I know my way around a kitchen, recreating this salsa can’t be THAT hard, can it?  Armed with a mental list of the ingredients, I raided the HEB produce section with reckless abandon.

The Ingredients

• 1 lb. fresh tomatillos (about 10-12 depending on the size)
• 2 fresh avocados
• 1 medium size sweet onion
• 6 Serrano peppers
• 1 tbsp. garlic (chopped)
• 1 fresh lime
• 1 bunch fresh cilantro
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• salt and pepper to taste

 

Making It Work

Tomatillos are really quite easy to work with.  If you aren’t familiar with it, a tomatillo is green fruit that is used a lot in Mexican cooking.  The fruits themselves are sheathed in a husk, so the first order of business is to remove the husks and wash the fruit.  Once the husks are removed, you will find that the fruits are kind of sticky.  A rinse in cool water will take care of this.  Now is a good time to go ahead and give the cilantro and peppers a rinse while you are at it.  Go ahead and rinse that lime too, we are going to use the zest, so we want to make sure it is good and clean.
Now that your fresh produce is all clean, its time to get busy chopping.  I prefer to let my food processor or immersion blender do most of the heavy lifting, but a coarse chopping of the tomatillos, cilantro and onion will give us a head start.  For the cilantro, I generally chop the leafy greens right above the band holding the bundle together.  We are looking for a fairly uniform 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch chop of the tomatillos, onion and cilantro.  Once they are chopped, put them into a nice big bowl, or your food processor. 
The Serrano peppers need to have their stems removed, and depending on the amount of heat you prefer, you may want to open the chiles up and remove the seeds.  I like the heat, so for me, they are staying in there.  Again a coarse chop is all that is needed, I chopped mine into about 1/2 inch pieces and toss them into the salsa bowl.
For the avocado, I find it easiest to cut the avocado in half, remove the pit, use a spoon to scoop it from the shell and then mash it with a fork in the salsa bowl.  Next, use a micro plane to zest the whole lime.  Be gentle here, the green zest definitely adds to the fragrance and flavor, but the white pith is not good eats.  Zest the entire lime and then cut it in half and squeeze all the juice you can get out of both halves.  Now we just need to add the garlic and spices and then let the food processor do its thing. 
I prefer my salsa to be silky smooth, so I let mine go for a long time.  If you prefer a chunkier salsa, use the pulse feature and go slow. Do a taste test periodically before adding any salt and pepper.
This recipe makes quite a bit of salsa, far more than I needed for the birthday party I made it for.  The good news is that I was able to freeze the leftovers in glass jars in smaller quantities.  I was amazed at how well the frozen salsa thawed and tasted after several weeks in the freezer.  This a new favorite of mine.  I will be making this recipe a lot this summer, taking advantage of the in-season prices for the tomatillos, cilantro and peppers.  And now that I know how well it freezes, I am anxious to see how well it handles the canning process for longer storage possibilities.