Mexican-Style Corn {elote or esquites}

I was telling my friend Bethany the other day that I absolutely love everything that I’ve been making to eat recently. This is slightly ironic because I had two epic recipe failures  on Cinco de Mayo, one of which was Mexican-style corn! At any rate I can’t tell if I just happen to be making super amazing food meal after meal or if I just have a renewed love affair with food having been exposed to The Fuck It Diet.

Have you heard about this diet? It speaks to me. It’s so simple. It’s literally just eat whatever you want whenever you want to heal your metabolism and neutralize your emotions and thoughts toward food. Diets cause disordered thinking toward food and physical and emotional issues. 🙋🏼‍♀️ It’s basically been the theory I’ve always felt in my heart was right but I had never known it to be verbalized and/or backed up by scientific information. It’s so transformative that I now get super annoyed when people talk about being on a diet for any other reason than a diet being medically necessary. (Sorry for all you dieters out there! But seriously if you’re sick of dieting, check out Caroline’s book.)

Anyway, back to how amazing this corn dish is. So my failure on Cinco de Mayo was two-fold. First, we discovered that my grill was out of gas. The recipe called for grilled sweet corn. Boo! Secondly after we oven-roasted the corn cobs we decided to slather the corn with the Mexican dressing I made instead of removing it from the cob and mixing it all together, which was my original  intent. I was not paying attention to the recipe when I was mixing the Mexican dressing and added 6 times the amount of chili powder to the dish. It! Was! Sooooooo! Bad! Tasting!

I’m not even going to get into the Tres Leches failure as that was even worse but suffice it to say, it was not even edible. It wasn’t that it was sooooo bad tasting but the texture was a flop.

With three extra ears of corn left over after the Cinco de Mayo debacle, I was hell bent on finding a good recipe to share with readers. So I loosely followed a recipe I found in the May 2019 edition of Costco Connection to come up with the below recipe. And this one is a winner. It’s perfectly creamy and spicy and chock full of flavor. Also, it’s pretty darn easy to make.

ingredients.

• 6 ears of corn, husked and cooked (grilled, boiled or or oven-roasted)
• 2 T. mayo (I used avocado oil mayo)
• 2 T. sour cream
• 1 tsp. to 1 T. hot pepper sauce
• juice of 1 lime
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• ⅛ to ¼ tsp. chili powder
• ½ c. crumbled cotija cheese
• 4 T. chopped fresh cilantro

directions.

1. To make esquites (“corn salad”): Once the corn has been cooked remove the kernels from the cob. (If you’re using leftover corn, pan-fry in a bit of avocado oil and some salt while you are mixing together the “dressing.”) Mix together the dressing: mayo, sour cream, pepper sauce, lime juice, garlic and chili powder. In a serving dish, blend the dressing with the corn. Top with cilantro and cotija cheese. 
2. To make elote (corn on the cob): Mix together the mayo, sour cream, pepper sauce, lime juice, garlic and chili powder. Slather onto cobs of corn. Top with cilantro and cotija.

Recipe rating: 