Submitted by Jessica Thompson

About the cook: I'm a serious home cook, who likes to get silly outside the kitchen. I live outside Austin, TX but grew up in California on foreign foods galore. Bring on the food adventures as long as I can bring along my husband and kids. Don't worry, they're good sports.

About the dish: Love elote but can't eat it gracefully? Here's a version for dates, parties, and fancy clothes that shouldn't get messy but should still get all the fun. The corn skewers can be roasted, broiled or grilled before getting all dressed up. Use Polar baby corn or another brand that you know doesn’t smell like a barnyard, or even fresh if you can get it!

National Origin: Mexican

Serves: 7

Estimated Time: Under 30 Minutes

Ingredients:

1 can whole baby corn, drained, rinsed, and dried on a towel
About 7 skewers
¼ cup butter, melted
¼ cup finely shredded cojita cheese, or parmesan if you are in a bind
1 lime, ready to be squeezed for juice
½ Tablespoon chili powder
¼ cup sour cream or Mexican crema
¼ cup cilantro, finely chopped

Preparation:

Set out melted butter, squeezable lime, sour cream, chili powder, shredded cheese, and cilantro all in bowls ahead of time so it’s easier to assemble your masterpieces when they are done cooking.

Skewer 3 or 5 baby corn on each skewer, fairly near the pointed end. Grill skewers of corn until grill marks appear. Canned corn is already cooked, so just get it to have some lovely browned spots. I use a George Foreman grill and it takes about 7 minutes.

Hold skewer over butter bowl and dribble butter over the cobs in a way to let the excess fall back into the butter bowl. Then, set skewer on a work surface and heavily sprinkle cheese, then lime, then chili powder. Next spread or dribble sour cream, then sprinkle cilantro. This layering promotes the most topping stickage.

Garnish with lime and/or cilantro and serve immediately or chilled later.

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