Corn Sage Muffin Variation コーン、セージ、マフィンバリエーション

It is getting to be the season for fresh corn and we have gotten quite few ears of it recently. We (mostly my wife) love corn and we’re making quite a few corn dishes. This particular baking project started out as one of my wife’s regular sage corn bread (in muffin form) but she realized the recipe called for 1 1/2 cups of corn puree and she only had a cup; not quire enough of the corn puree required to make the batch of muffins. Then she remembered we had left-over corn, roasted red pepper, edamame and bacon salad that we had made a few days ago. She thought, ‘That salad included corn. If I substitute the salad for the missing corn, wouldn’t that make up the shortfall?’ She first contemplated pureeing the salad and adding it to the corn puree but in the end, she decided to just put a cup of the salad into the batter to add some additional texture.   I will never fathom how my wife (the queen of substitutions in recipes) comes up with these things but this substitution happened to result in a very good muffin. The red in the picture is the roasted red pepper. The green is the jalapeños pepper and boiled edamame. The flavors of these ingredients, particularly the roasted red pepper really comes through and went beautifully with the over all corn sage flavor of the muffin. This is a variation well worth repeating.

The picture below shows the salad she added.

The ingredients and directions for the two recipes she combine are shown below for convenience

Ingredients: For the muffin
1 cup grated corn
1 stick butter
6 large sage leaves (or several sprigs of rosemary)
1 cup of corn salad (this is the current variation in the recipe) (Salad recipe below)
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
3/4 corn flour (or corn meal)
2 cups All Purpose (AP) flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup sugar (or more for a slightly sweeter muffin)

Directions:
Grate the ears of corn on a stand grater. Scrape the ears with the back of the knife to get the remaining "corn milk" . Melt the butter in a saucepan (do not allow it to boil or brown). Mix in the grated corn, salt, and sage leaves. Cook until creamy and thickened, making a kind of polenta. Remove the sage leaves. To achieve a really smooth emersion blend it further in a “motor boat” blender. Allow the mixture to cool. Add the buttermilk and eggs and mix until blended.

In a large bowl sift together the corn flour (or corn meal), AP flour, baking soda, baking powder, and sugar. Add the 1 cup of corn salad and mix in the dry ingredients to coat with a bit of the flour. Add the liquid ingredients and stir until blended. Scoop into the prepared muffin tin. Cook in 400F degree oven for 18 to 20 minutes for muffins, or until a skewer comes out clean and the muffins are nicely browned.

Ingredients: For the corn salad
1 roasted red pepper, skin, ribs and seeds removed and cut into small squares
2 ears of fresh corn on cob, microwaved wrapped in wet paper towel for 2 minutes or more until cooked
1 sweet (Vidalia) onion, finely chopped
2 strips of bacon, cooked to crisp and crumbled
1 large jalapeño pepper, seeded, deveined and finely chopped
1 cup of boiled edamame, shelled (or lima beans)

For dressing:
1 tbs Dijon mustard
1 tbs honey
2 tbs rice vinegar (or any vinegar)
8 tbs or more fruity olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
For roasted red pepper
I roasted them at 450F in the toaster oven on convection mode for 20 minutes turning a few times so that all the surface was cooked/charred. I then put them in Ziploc bags to steam for 30 minutes. Once cooled down, remove the stem end, skin, ribs, seeds and peel. (The skin will come off easily).

Combine all the ingredients, add the dressing and stir well.

Corn, Roasted Ped Pepper, Edamame and Jalapeño Pepper Salad 玉蜀黍、ロースト赤パプリカ、枝豆とべーコンサラダ

Although it is not quite local corn season, fresh corn is available and on our last trip to Whole Foods my wife celebrated the season by stocking up on corn. She used it for various dishes and this is one of them. In addition, we got a bag of 6 red peppers. (Turns out it was much cheaper to buy the bag of peppers than to buy several peppers individually). My wife looked up corn salad recipes which used roasted red pepper on the internet. This dish is an amalgamation of the various ingredients used in those recipes with our own ideas mixed in. It has a nice color combination and tasted great.

Ingredients:
1 roasted red pepper, skin, ribs and seeds removed and cut into small squares
2 ears of fresh corn on cob, microwaved wrapped in wet paper towel for 2 minutes or more until cooked
1 sweet (Vidalia) onion, finely chopped
2 strips of bacon, cooked to crisp and crumbled
1 large jalapeño pepper, seeded, deveined and finely chopped
1 cup of boiled edamame, shelled (or lima beans)

For dressing:
1 tbs Dijon mustard
1 tbs honey
2 tbs rice vinegar (or any vinegar)
8 tbs or more fruity olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

For roasted red pepper
I roasted them at 450F in the toaster oven on convection mode for 20 minutes turning a few times so that all the surface was cooked/charred. I then put them in Ziploc bags to steam for 30 minutes. Once cooled down, remove the stem end, skin, ribs, seeds and peel. (The skin will come off easily).

Combine all the ingredients, add the dressing and stir well.

This is a great salad. The corn adds and lovely sweetness and crunch. Although I initially protested when my wife suggested using bacon, it adds a salty, smokiness and crunch which is really a great addition and a “must-have” for this salad. In addition to adding to the color the roasted red peppers adds a slightly spicy bite. The edamame yields yet another crunch dimension. The dressing adds a bright tart note. We will be making this one again.

“Canned mackerel and hanpen” Satsuma-age like fish cake 鯖缶とはんぺんの薩摩揚げ

Canned mackerel or “saba-kan” 鯖缶 is a very popular canned fish item in Japan and is readily available in the U.S. Upon inspection, of the canned mackerel in our pantry, I realized that the “Best used by” date had just passed on one of the cans. (I thought canned food lasted forever but that is apparently not the case). I needed to use this can fast and I then saw a perfect  recipe of fried fishcake on the Japanese website I follow using canned mackerel and “Hanpen” fishcake はんぺん.  This type of fishcake is called “Satsuma-age” さつま揚げ, which is a very common dish served grilled in Izakaya. Although I attempted to make Satusma-age from scratch, it was not quite authentic due to the lack of appropriate kinds of fish. The current version is interesting because instead of using ground fish meat “surimi” すり身 which is the authentic way to make Satuma-age this recipe used a mixture of canned mackerel and hanpen.  I served this with the usual grated ginger and soy sauce. It does not have the texture of authentic Sastuma-age but this was good; crispy outside and tender inside with the firmer texture of edamame and carrot. It all worked. The inclusion of ginger and deep frying toned down the otherwise strong flavor of the mackerel. This is a perfect dish with sake.

Ingredients:
One can of boiled (Mizu-ni 水煮) mackerel (190 grams with the liquid, about 150 grams fish meat), drained and crumbled
2 hanpen steamed fish cakes, frozen, thawed (240 grams), cut into small pieces.
1 tbs potato starch
1 tsp sugar
30 grams julienned carrot(1/3 of medium carrot), boiled or microwaved for 30 seconds
60 grams cooked and shelled edamame
1/2 tsp grated ginger

Peanut oil for shallow frying

Directions:
Mix all the ingredients until completely incorporated (The original recipe placed everything in a plastic bag and hand massaged it to make the dough, I did not have the patience to do that so I used an immersion blender, #1).
Mix in the edamame and carrot and make flat ovals (I made 8) (#2)
Add the oil to the frying pan to the depth of 5mm and heat to around 350F and shallow fry for 3 minutes (#3)
Turn over and fry the other side for 3 minutes (#4)
Drain and serve immediately (or once refrigerated, toaster-oven to warm).

This is not Satsuma-age but it is a nice fishcake and we really like it. Since the ingredients (hanpen and canned mackerel) are easy to get, this is a good and easy dish to make.

Edamame hummus 枝豆フムス

 We usually stock frozen edamame since it is a good and healthy snack. Recently, we found the frozen edamame from a frozen case at Tako Grill to be the best. My wife, found a recipe for "edamame hummus" in the cookbook called "Smoke and Pickles" by Edward Lee which we recently acquired. It used shelled edamame. My wife wanted to make this dish but she thought rather than using our stash of edamame which was in the shell and would have to be shelled it would be better to order some frozen edamame that was already out of the shell.  So we ordered some from our regular grocery store. When deciding what to order we could not figure out if the packages available were edamame shelled or in pods. We took a chance and ordered one anyway and it turned out they were in the pods so they had to be shelled anyway. My wife cooked up the package and shelled them making about 1 cup. She turned the prepared edamame over to me to make the hummus. I diverted from the original recipe a bit but the resulting dip/hummus was quite good.

Ingredients:
1 cup edamame, cooked and shelled
1/2 shallot, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves,
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 tbs soy sauce
1/4 cup smooth peanut butter (or tahini or Japanese nerigoma sesame paste)
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1tsp salt
1/2 cup water (I did not add the water but I added hot water -may be 1-2 tsp to the peanut butter mixutre to make it looser)
2 tbs olive oil (1/2 tbs to sautee shallot and the remaining mixed into the final product)

Directions:
Mix the peanut butter, soy sauce and hot water to make smooth loose paste.
Heat the olive oil and sauté the shallot and then garlic, add the peanut butter mixture, the edamame and heat up (below).
Using a beaker and emersion blender, process the above mixture. I added additional olive oil to make the mixture a bit smoother. Add lemon juice and cumin. Taste and add a small amount of salt to taste.

This is a unique dip/hummus. The edamame flavor really comes through. Substituting, peanut butter for the tahini (we did this before) worked well. We really like this as a hummus variation.