Sweet and Spicy – Corn Gets a Kick

Posted by emily on August 21, 2011 · 2 Comments 

I’ve been a little lazy with my cooking lately. Well… maybe more like lazy with the creative cooking/blogging… I actually had a really good run last week of bringing my lunch, super tasty salmon and roasted potatoes with rosemary, and making dinner, just eggs, grilled cheese and pasta – you know, the normal stuff.

So in my effort to cook the vegetables I picked up last weekend (yes, it took me this long to cook them) I wanted to get fancy. Ok, maybe not fancy, but certainly testing a new recipe. Next step was finding recipes for which I had all the stuff at home. AMAZINGLY I had everything for Fresh Corn and Basil Cornbread and Honey-Ancho Chile Butter!

When I think of cornbread with more than just corn, I think jalapeno, cheddar, a little spice, so this was a nice change of pace. The basil is a fresh surprise and complement to the corn, and using the fresh corn kernels adds great texture to the bread. It’s definitely worth trying, but while I will definitely put in fresh corn again I think I’ll go for some spice next time.

If you click through to the recipe you’ll see that it calls for a food processor to mix the dry ingredients and cut in the butter; however, from this post you know I dont’ have one.aa Ta-da… HANDS! Since I have done this with a variety of recipes now, I figured I’d show you what it looks like when you cut in the butter yourself:

1) ‘Cut’ the butter into the dry ingredients by squeezing the cold butter between your fingers, rubbing it together with the flour, over and over until it looks like this:

2) Like magic, even though it looks dry, when you squeeze it together it will do this, and that’s when you add your wet ingredients!

Next up was some Honey-Ancho Chile butter for my other ear of corn! SO simple and it makes a butter that packs a punch in the after taste, but is also slightly sweet. I didn’t have garlic or onion powder so I just grated a little fresh ingredients and it did just the trick. It brightened up my corn and gave it a kick, a nice contrast to the natural sweetness of the corn, I was one step away from running to the store so I could sprinkle on some cotija and pretend I was at the state fair.

And just a note – I DID try the chile butter on my cornbread, the two did not mesh so much because of the basil. I think the butter would be amazing on normal cornbread and especially on the vegetables that I packed for lunch tomorrow. Yup, it happened, now I have a whole stick of ancho chile butter and will be eating it on EVERYTHING.

Filed under herbs, side, snack, veggies