In the Alchemist's Kitchen Vol 8 - Mexican Street Corn - Elote

 In the Alchemist's Kitchen Vol 8 - Mexican Street Corn - Elote

Labor Day is here! If you are like me, as you prepare for your Labor Day Feast, you want to serve just the right foods that epitomize those hazy, crazy, lazy days of summer.  I wanted to find a dish that would give my guests the culinary equivalent of squeezing out the last drops of summer into a dish.  I found it - Elote, or Mexican Street Corn. First of all, here in Western MA, sweet corn season is at its peak. You can get a dozen ears for about $8 at our favorite farm stand, and less else. Second of all, if you serve this as a buffet, friends who are vegan can skip the cheese and sour cream, but enjoy the lime and cilantro and the delicious grilled corn on the cob. I also have a lot of friends these days who eat only halal or kosher meats, and I get around all of this with this recipe.  I'll add a Mexican summer salad with homemade dressing and fresh heirloom tomatoes and black beans and wow my friends with the bounty of summer.

A blend of flavors guaranteed to knock your flip flops off!

From the ahead of thyme website (they're British, in case you can't tell from the spelling)

It has all the textures and flavours. Creamy, spicy, cheesy, savoury, crunchy—with elote, you don’t have to choose. Calling Mexican street corn delicious is an understatement. Plus, corn is high in fibre, antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins, making it a good addition to your diet in moderate amounts.

 This is all good, you say, but Pat, where does the alchemy comes in?  Food Pairing Analysis is a relatively new field in which you can match foods that you might not otherwise of thought of putting together according to common chemicals.  The cilantro, lime, spices and cheeses that adorn the sweet corn will have complementary elements that blend together to make the best flavor pairings - sweet with acid; piquant with spicy; aromatic with fat.  You can create some new dishes of your own by signing up for a free account at my favorite site, FoodPairing.com, which is very easy for amateurs like you and me to use. When you add the textural crunchy, gritty, leafy sensory aspects - you can't lose with this one.

 In my search on FoodPairing for what goes with sweet corn, I got good hits with basil, lemongrass, honey, and strangely, Gin.  Here is an example of what the food pairing website provides as matches.

Website capture of the entry page to Food Pairing website