Mexican Corn & Blackbean Salad with Coffee Chipotle Mayonnaise

Mexican Corn & Black Bean Salad

This recipe is an adaptation from the infamous Mexican food heavyweight Enrique Olvera. He’ll be gracing our shores for the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival in March next year and to celebrate his impending masterclass debut he kindly shared a corn recipe. A dish that he has become rather famous for. Said recipe calls for chicanta – that’s ground ants for you and I. While I definitely consider myself an adventurous eater I’ve had many a brief and torrid encounters with ants in my lemonade/ribbon sandwich/culinary picnic item of choice in the great outdoors over the years and ants are not for me. I’m being grossly presumptuous and assuming they are not for you either so I’ve swapped in chipotle into the mayonnaise instead. For the authenticity slaves among us, the original recipe is up verbatim on the blog. With this version I’ve no doubt bastardized a Mexican street food favourite but with the addition of black beans, coriander and avocado, this salad tastes great and won’t see you running around headless at specialty food stores asking where they might stock the dried ants.

Ingredients

425g corn, husks removed, quartered

250g baby corn

1 bunch coriander, washed, roughly chopped

1 avocado, deseeded, roughly chopped

1 450g tin black beans, drained

1 red onion, finely sliced

Mayonnaise

1 egg yolk

20g Dijon mustard

250 ml vegetable oil

20g finely ground coffee

5g chipotle powder (ground dried chipotle chillies)

1 tbspn lime juice, strained

1 tbspn salt

Method

Add the egg yolk and mustard to a bowl. Whisk until they emulsify. Drizzle in the oil while whisking continually until a mayonnaise texture is achieved. Add the coffee, chipotle and lime-juice. Season with salt to taste and refrigerate until serving.

Char grill the corn pieces until cooked to your liking, starting with the quartered corn as this will take longer to cook and adding the baby corn for the last few minutes of cooking. Smear the mayonnaise over the corn, basting and turning the corn pieces until coated, reserving some of the mayonnaise for serving.

Place the coriander, avocado, black beans and onion in a large salad bowl and toss gently to combine. Add the corn and serve warm with the extra mayonnaise.

For more info on the festival you should check out the website and get in quick. The events sell out at lightening speed. I already have an unhealthy shortlist of chefs I'd love to see.

Here is the original recipe for the corn dish of Enrique's. If anyone knows where in Sydney we can get fried ants, please let me know, I really would like to try this dish using the original recipe. Also if anyone makes this, please do let me know how you get on.

*** Update on the Ants. Evidently green ants are part of our indigenous cuisine. Thanks to our friendly reader Claire, aboriginals include green ants with a tart and quite citrus flavour profile to food. Thanks Claire and if anyone finds out how we can get our hands on some ants let us know and I'll update the post.

ROAST BABY CORN WITH CHICATANA AND COFFEE MAYONNAISE 

|  SERVES 4  |

| INGREDIENTS |

BABY CORN

12 ears baby corn, cleaned

CHICATANA MAYONNAISE

1 egg yolk

20g Dijon mustard

250 ml vegetable oil

20g finely ground coffee

5g ground chicatana ant

1 Tbspn lime juice, strained

1 Tbspn salt

totomoztle SALT

4 dried Totomoztle corn husks

1 Tbspn water

250g Colima salt

| PRESENTATION PREPARATIONS |

1 baby corn recipe

60g chicatana mayonnaise

4g totomoztle salt

1 Tbspn totomoztle

| PROCEDURE |

BABY CORN

Roast corn ears on a comal griddle over medium heat until cooked and browned. Skewer ears on a small wooden stick and keep hot.

CHICATANA MAYONNAISE

Beat egg yolks and mustard until they emulsify. Drizzle in oil while beating until the proper mayonnaise texture is achieved. Add coffee and ground ant, lime juice and salt. Keep refrigerated.

TOTOMOZTLE SALT

 

Moisten dried corn husk in warm water until it becomes flexible. Add water to the salt until a pasty consistency is achieved. Remove the husk from the water and fill it with the salt mix; close the husk tamale-style. Bake at 160˚C for 45 minutes to an hour, until salt is compacted. Remove the husk, crumble the salt and set aside.

| PRESENTATION |

Spread chicatana mayonnaise on the baby corn ears; dust with a bit of salt. Fill the lec gourd recipient with totomoztle husks.

With a smoking pipe/gun—lit and filled with totomoztle—fill the lec with smoke, add three ears baby corn, re-cover the lec and serve immediately. Repeat for the three remaining lecs.

Carrot Cake...but not as you know it.

Friends gather in.

This is carrot cake, but not as you know it. I recently ate a rather questionable amount of carrot cake at the amazing Rosendahl Café in Stockholm and for a cake that never excited me, I’ve been hooked on it ever since. While most people seem to like the idea because carrot insinuates health motivated consumption, I tend to know where my lines are drawn; carrot and cake were, until my recent conversion, on separate paths that never the twain shall meet. But convert I did and preachy I am.  So I’ve adapted your bog standard carrot cake recipe here to include the lighter floral flavours of orange and violet to make it the perfect cake for summer.  The flavours are a little more complex, layered like. It’s the sort of cake you could be friends with. It will surprise you and annoy you and inspire you and make you laugh and be there for you to eat in copious amounts if you are going through a rough patch. Basically, it’s a really nice damn cake.

Ingredients

Cake

3 eggs

3 teaspoons orange blossom water

250ml canola oil

300g caster sugar

400g plain flour, sifted

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate soda

3 tsp cardamom, ground

2 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp nutmeg

400g carrots, peeled, finely grated

Icing

200g soft unsalted butter

200g cream cheese

2tsp orange blossom

3dl (300g) icing sugar

Rind and juice of 1 lemon

Crystallised violets and edible flowers to serve

Method

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Butter and flour two 20cm-diameter cake pans with high sides. Line bases with baking paper.

Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs, orange blossom water, oil and sugar until thick and smooth.

Sift the dry ingredients into a separate bowl and stir gently to combine. Add to the egg mixture with the carrot and stir the batter gently until just combined. Divide between the two baking trays. Bake the cakes until a tester inserted into the centre comes out clean, between 40 and 60 minutes. Turn out cakes onto racks. Peel off the baking paper and allow to cool completely before icing. To make the icing, beat the cream cheese, butter and orange blossom in a large bowl until smooth and fluffy. Gradually beat in the icing sugar and lemon zest.

Place one cake on a platter. Spread the icing evenly over. Top with the second cake. Spread the remaining icing over the top and sides if desired. Top with edible flowers and crystalised violets.

My Top Five Paris Picks

My top five restaurant picks are over on the Paris Kitchen this week. After spending a considerable amount of my time there "eating" it was harder than I thought to narrow it down to five! Given the research for my next book project is very much in the Bistronomy space, my choices reflect this style although I am going to put up a detailed Paris post in coming weeks with lots of other recommendations and interviews with some great chefs plus recipes.

Thumbprint Freckle Cookies

I regularly write recipes for a kids magazine and for the latest issue we've been working on some more old fashioned style recipes like thumbprint cookies. Here I've used an 'old school' recipe and incorporated raspberry essence and chocolate freckles - one of the benefits of writing for a kids mag means I legitimately get to eat biscuits like these. The results were pretty delicious so I had to share.

Chocolate and Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies

Ingredients

210g plain flour, sifted

30g cocoa powder, sifted

45g dark chocolate, melted

1 ½ tsp baking powder

pinch salt

110g butter

2 tsp raspberry extract

50g caster sugar

2 eggs

50g pure icing sugar (for rolling)

1 bag chocolate freckles

Method

Preheat oven to 175C. Line a baking sheet with baking paper and set aside. Add the flour, cocoa baking powder and salt to a bowl, stir to combine and set aside. Cream the butter, raspberry extract and sugar until pale and thick, add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract and stir to combine. Add the flour mix, in thirds to the butter mixture, blending well after each addition.

Roll into walnut sized balls and then roll the balls in the icing sugar mixture before placing on the baking tray. Leave room between each biscuit for them to expand a little. Press a freckle into the centre of each cookie, depressing it in the centre slightly. Bake for 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve warm or allow to cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

The Cheese Guy and a recipe for Beaufort & Thyme Gougeres

One of the benefits of deciding to trek around Mt Blanc is coming across one of the masters of one of your favourite cheeses in a tiny village on a random hillside (aka Savoie region of the French Alps), like Mr Beaufort here, one of the eponymous cheesemakers of the region. We came across Mr Beaufort towards the end of 7 days hiking and let me tell you, stumbling into his little cheese cave out of the freezing winds to smell that cheese and eat a slab of it was heaven reincarnated. He was so lovely, quiet and unassuming - almost as if he had no idea that the cheese he was making was one of the most awarded in France let alone lauded across the world. Trust me if I could have fit a wheel of that stuff into my bag I would have - it was painful to walk out of there empty handed.

A few fun facts on Beaufort Cheese

- Firm raw cows milk cheese, part of the Gruyere family

- There are 3 types - a summer beaufort, winter beaufort and one that is made in the chalets in the alps which is Beaufort d'alpage; all made in the Savoie region of France

- It takes 11 litres of milk for 1 kg of cheese sourced from two special mountain cow breeds Tarine and Abondance

- Making it is high maintenance - the milk is heated, cooled, cast into its concave shape, soaked in brine, rested for a few months during which time it gets salted by hand daily, turned and massaged.

- It's then aged for 6-12 months minimum before you and I scoff it down in disgusting proportions...or is that just me?

And what would a post on cheese be without a recipe with cheese, beaufort cheese gougeres.

Beaufort & Thyme Gougeres

Ingredients

100ml milk
150ml water
120g butter
pinch salt
1 tsp caster sugar
150g plain flour, sifted
3-4 eggs
150g Beaufort cheese, chopped into small pieces
1 tbsp thyme leaves, finely chopped

Method
Preheat oven to 180C.
Combine the milk, water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan and bring to the boil over medium heat. Remove from the heat and add the flour. Stir briskly with a wooden spoon until the mixture comes away from the sides of the saupcean. Return to the heat, add the cheese and continue mixing over a low heat for 2 minutes or until the cheese melts and is incorporated.

Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl, add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. The mixture should become really glossy and thick. Add the chopped thyme at this point and stir to combine. Season to taste.

You can pour the mixture into a piping bag or if like me, you hate the things, I just use two dessert spoons to scoop the mixture straight onto a tray lined with baking paper.

Bake in the oven for 25 minutes, until golden and crisp. You can use an egg wash if you like but I think the eggs and butter in the mix do it for you. Allow to cool on a wire rack before serving. Toss over some thyme flowers if you have them.

Makes 30 if you can resist eating the choux dough while making them.