Chickpea to Cook

There’s something real and earthy about eating roasted corn on the cob. It’s one of my favorite festival foods: the slightly smokey, charred flavor contrasting with the sweet juices inside the kernals make it worth my while to wait in long lines and pay $3 an ear. 

But not even I was prepared for the new corn on the cob experience I was to have two weeks ago at the Dia de los Muertos Festival in Los Angeles. We’re talking butter, salt, lime juice, chili powder, and (gasp!) mayonnaise.

It’s corn on the cob, Mexican style, and I swear it couldn’t have been better or more authentic if I had bought it off a street vendor in Tijuanna. Instead I nibbled it under an almost full moon in a Hollywood cemetery that was decked out for the Day of the Dead.

The kernals were slightly charred and glistening with butter when the vendor handed me the cob. The first one he had given me was too black–if it’s too burnt you can’t get a full appreciation of the sweetness. This piece was just right.

I saw others douse their cobs in lime juice and dash it with chili pepper. I did the same, and then added a thin line of mayo to one side. It made the corn so moist and succulent, I wondered how it had taken me so long to find this combination.

Roasted corn will never taste the same again.