Grilled corn with chili and lemon
Time: 30 minutes. 8 portions resulting from the ingredients
The corn simply boiled is incredibly good, and the variant we present here – one that ends in one of the most popular snakes sold on the streets of Latin America – is even more delicious. The bitter green lemon juice is very fresh, and the swiftness with the flavor of smoked meat of the chili powder lines out the crispy sweetness of the corn beans. It is served with more coarse foods, like beef roast, pork ribs, or chicken.
Ingredients:
- 8 pieces of sweet corn
- 3 spoons of butter
- 1 lime cut into slices
- 1 spoon of chili powder
Instructions:
The grill must have a medium temperature, and the grating must be placed at no more than 10 centimeters from the flame. Pull the corn leaves to its end, without breaking them; throw away the floss, than put the leaves back on the corn as they were.
When the grill is ready, put the corn to be grilled for 10-15 minutes, turning it from time to time. When the beans start to get a brown color, take the corn from the grill, put butter on all its sides and then put it back on the embers for 5-10 minutes until you see the beans became copper-colored.
Wring out lime juice on the corn, put some chili powder and eat it at once.
Use quality heat
For this food to be really special, use quality chili powder. The one at the supermarket is a mixture of ordinary chilies, oregano, salt, and maybe some garlic – it is an amateur mixture of a weak quality. If you are not satisfied easily and you want things done by the book, you have more options: you may look in the supermarkets until you find Mexican chili, made of chilies from New Mexico or fumed paprika from Spain called pimenton. Another option would be to mix the supermarket powder with some chili from the garden, preliminary dried and turned into powder. A little garlic won’t harm, especially if you keep it in the fridge before dinner.
Lamb joint roasted on the spit with laurel leaves
Time: 30 minutes. 4 portions resulting from the ingredients.
The Middle East gourmets love splits, and adding fresh herbs bring an extra flavor to the delicious ingredients grilled on the stick. If you use wood sticks, keep them in water for at least an hour before you start cooking to make sure that they won’t get burned very quickly on the ember. And if you use two sticks for each split, the twisting process will be easier. For more flabby meat, use the part from the lamb’s shoulder, so that even of you let the splits on the grill for a longer time the meat doesn’t get too dry. The laurel leaves should not be eaten; they are only used for the taste they give.
Ingredients:
- 800 g lamb meat, cut into bricks with the sides of 4 cm
- 500 g of vegetable marrows, cut in 3 cm slices
- 3 spoons of extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tea spoon of dry oregano
- 1 spoon of hashed garlic
- Salt and pepper
- A lot of laurel leaves, preferably not dried.
Instructions:
Heat the grill: the fire should be medium and the grating must be placed 10 cm above the heat.
Mix the oil, the oregano, the garlic, the salt and the pepper. Put the vegetable marrows and the meat in the oil mixture to make them grease on all their sides. When you are ready to work, put alternatively on the sticks the meat, the vegetable marrows and the laurel leaves.
Leave the meat on the grill between 2 and 5 minutes on each side according to the power of the heat and to the way you like it prepared.
Smoke some herbs
Fresh grilled herbs bring a delicious flavor to the meat. Look for fresh laurel leaves at the supermarket (when they are fresh they are shiny, green and a little smooth). They have more flavor than the dried ones and they match perfectly the lamb meat. Still, if you don’t find fresh leaves, use dry ones because they are better than nothing.
Rosemary is another herb that is perfect on the grill. You can use as splits sticks little branches with no leaves (you can use the leaves for marinated sauce). Or you could take entire stalks of mint, oregano, or wormwood and put them on the grill before you put the meat, because the results are amazing.
