Skillet-cook summer corn and chorizo for tacos that pop with summer flavor

You know what it feels like when you bite into really good corn on the cob. Sweet, flavorful pops. Juices flying as if you bit into an apple. Maybe a little smoky char from the grill. Maybe you’ve got to squint — either from bursts of kernels or the nearby summer sun.

There are many ideas on how to get to that Ultimate Corn. They usually start by telling you to buy corn that was picked that morning, then cook it that day. That’s because once the corn is picked, its sugars start the process of converting to starches. The corn will get less sweet, and that juicy pop might be more like a dry chew.

While fresh-picked corn will be sweetest, it’s not always available. At the grocery store, opt for cobs still in the husks. There’s a better chance they were picked more recently. Frozen corn kernels also are a good option. They were most likely frozen at their peak, but there are, of course, a few wrinkles: Brands differ greatly in taste and texture, and there’s added moisture to consider when cooking.

The best method for cooking corn on the cob is a deeply personal matter best left to debate with relatives. Still, it’s worthwhile to have a go-to method for cooking corn off the cob. The matter is a little less contentious: Whether starting from frozen or fresh, opt for starting with high, dry heat. Whether in a skillet, in a hot oven, under the broiler or on a grill, you want the corn cooked hot enough that the outsides caramelize, but not long enough that their juices expel and the corn ends up dry. You’re looking to warm, soften and caramelize the corn — not cook it to pulp.

To get there, cook the kernels over high heat without bothering them until they start to brown. They will pop like popcorn, too. At that point, you’ll just stir a few times to warm up the kernels. In the case of frozen corn, it’s important to cook it through, but if you’re starting with fresh corn, you can err on the side of undercooked: Raw fresh corn is delicious, too.

Take a spoonful of your corn right from the pan. It just might remind you of that eye-squinting corn on the cob, which might not be the case if you cooked that corn low and slow, like in creamed corn. The corn flavor might be there, but the good juicy bite will probably not.

To balance out sweet-as-can-be corn, consider spicy, smoky bedfellows: It could be hot Italian sausage, harissa, gochujang skirt steak, a dusting of chili powder, pickled chiles — the list goes on. In this recipe below, the bedfellow (tacofellow!) is fresh chorizo, which gets its kick from fresh chile peppers.

Sold in the raw meat section, fresh chorizo is most likely Mexican chorizo. It will come in casings or uncased and needs to be cooked before eating. The other main chorizo is Spanish chorizo, usually rusty red from smoked paprika. It comes cured or semi-cured and smoked or not smoked. You’d treat that more like salami.

In this corn and chorizo taco, the spicy sausage is cooked first, then the corn cooks quickly in the chorizo fat. Serve with something creamy, such as avocado or yogurt or sour cream, and a squeeze of lime. It’s all you really need.

Corn and Chorizo tacos

40 minutes

4 to 6 servings (2 tacos per serving)

Storage Notes: Refrigerate the meat and corn in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil or a neutral cooking oil, such as canola

1 pound fresh chorizo, casings removed if necessary

4 cups fresh (from 4 to 5 ears) or frozen (about 20 ounces) corn kernels

3 scallions, thinly sliced, white and green parts separated

Kosher salt or fine sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

8 to 12 six-inch corn tortillas, toasted (see NOTE)

Sliced avocado, for serving

Sour cream, for serving

Lime wedges, for serving

Steps

In a large cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven over medium-high heat, heat the oil until shimmering. Add the sausage and cook, stirring and breaking it up with your spoon, until browned, 5 to 8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the sausage to a plate, leaving the fat behind.

Add the corn kernels and scallion whites to the skillet. Season to taste with salt and pepper and cook, undisturbed, until browned and starting to pop, 4 to 6 minutes. Stir and cook until the kernels are shiny and brightly colored, about 1 minute. Return the chorizo to the skillet and stir to combine. Remove from the heat. Spoon some filling onto a tortilla, then repeat to fill the rest of the tortillas.

Serve with the scallion greens, avocado or sour cream, and lime wedges for squeezing.

NOTE: To toast the tortillas, place them in a hot, dry skillet (cast iron is good) over medium to medium-high heat, or directly over the burner on about medium-low if you have a gas stove. Let the tortillas darken and even char in spots.

Dark Kitchen Takeaway from Covid-19 Pandemic

Dark kitchens are fitted out in alleyways and off-site locations in a bid to feed Australia’s growing meal delivery economy during the Covid-19 pandemic.

For the past five years online meal delivery has grown by 76 per cent annually generating a predicted $872 million this year and over $1 billion in 2021.

According CBRE’s report Australian Online Meal Delivery & Dark Kitchens report this increased demand—pushed higher by Covid-19—has turned many hospitality retailers to dark kitchens as a low-cost alternative.

Dark kitchens typically serviced 20-30 restaurant brands and were operated out of warehouse spaces in the backstreets of high-density, inner-city areas where meal-delivery was in high demand.

CBRE report author James Giannarelli said dark kitchens were becoming increasingly popular worldwide following the uptake of delivery services.

“Another key advantage of dark kitchens, [is] the absence of rental fees—or where rental fees apply, running costs are minimised via monthly rental agreements, as opposed to multi-year lease terms,” Giannarelli said.

“While some contracts offer a potentially rent-free use of dark kitchens, delivery service providers are known to instead take a larger percentage of each sale that comes out of the dark kitchen. ”

The head of Victorian logistics and retail research said these spaces also gave hospitality retails the ability to market-test locales before signing up for a bricks and mortar lease.

There are more than 250 dark kitchens globally including two sites in Melbourne and one in Sydney which provide co-working spaces for restaurants and cafes for online delivery.

CBRE director of retail leasing Leif Olson said dark kitchens were either provided and managed by the delivery service provider or internally setup and managed by the restaurateurs themselves.

“An increasingly popular strategy for dark kitchen providers is to fit-out an array of 20 foot containers with commercial kitchen equipment,” Olson said.

A dark kitchen was set up by Deliveroo in Windsor, Victoria in 2017 in an alleyway behind Chapel Street, the site has been used by restaurants such as Kong, Messina and 8Bit.

The site, which includes two full-scale professional kitchens and a large waiting room with phone chargers and an order display screen for delivery riders, was built and fitted out by Deliveroo, then leased free-of-charge to restaurants and other brands.

In cases where the delivery services set up the site the restaurateurs paid no up front fee instead there was a higher commission fee on orders placed through the app.

Food delivery services such as Uber Eats and Deliveroo can take up to a 35 per cent cut from restaurants.

Similarly, the meal kit delivery market has also grown significantly with Marely Spoon’s revenue growing by 60 per cent in the 2019 financial year and 74 per cent in 2018.

Back to School Lunches

Back-to-school time means it’s back to being busy before, during and after school, so it’s time for parents and kids to create new routines. From early wake-up calls to shuttling kids to school and activities, ease the morning mayhem by incorporating a simple meal-planning strategy.

As a parent, look for fresh, make-ahead options your kids will enjoy. Serve up lunchbox love by mixing up the classic sandwich with a spin on sushi in this Bento Box Lunch recipe. It’s a creative way to deliver nutritious, wholesome ingredients that will make the whole lunchroom drool. Plus, it’s something you can take for lunch too.

No matter what meals you’re prepping, a store like ALDI can be your solution for packing tasty and better-for-you choices for lunches and on-the-go snacks. With high-quality ingredients at affordable prices, ALDI offers what you need to get ready for the days ahead.

For more recipes and meal prepping ideas, visit aldi.us.

Bento Box Lunch

Recipe courtesy of Chef Alyssa, ALDI Test Kitchen

Servings: 4

“Sushi Roll”:

4 slices SimplyNature Knock Your Sprouts Off Sprouted Low Sodium 7 Grain Bread
4 slices Lunch Mate Never Any! Turkey
1 teaspoon Burman’s Yellow Mustard
1/2 avocado, sliced
1 mini cucumber, cut into 3-inch-by-1/4-inch sticks

Quinoa Salad:

1 cup SimplyNature Organic Quinoa, cooked
1/4 cup Southern Grove Sliced Almonds
2 mandarin oranges, peeled and separated
1/4 cup Southern Grove Dried Cranberries
3 bunches green onions, sliced
1 teaspoon Carlini Pure Olive Oil
Stonemill Iodized Salt, to taste
Stonemill Ground Black Pepper, to taste

Broccoli Salad:

1 large head broccoli, chopped
1/4 cup Southern Grove Sliced Almonds
1/4 cup Southern Grove Dried Cranberries
1 teaspoon Fusia Soy Sauce
1/2 cup Friendly Farms Vanilla Nonfat Greek Yogurt
Stonemill Ground Black Pepper, to taste

Cinnamon Apples:

1 Granny Smith apple, sliced
1 tablespoon Nature’s Nectar Lemon Juice
1 teaspoon Stonemill Ground Cinnamon

To make “Sushi Roll”: Trim crust from bread. Using rolling pin, roll out bread slices to 1/8-inch thickness. Top with turkey, mustard, avocado and cucumber. Roll into cylinder, wrap with plastic wrap and cut in half.

To make Quinoa Salad: In medium bowl, combine quinoa, almonds, oranges, cranberries, green onions and olive oil; season to taste with salt and pepper.

To make Broccoli Salad: In medium bowl, combine broccoli, almonds, cranberries, soy sauce and yogurt; season to taste with pepper.

To make Cinnamon Apples: Toss apples with lemon juice and cinnamon. Place in sandwich bags and wrap tightly.

Organize equal amounts of “Sushi Rolls,” Quinoa Salad, Broccoli Salad and Cinnamon Apples in separate bento box compartments.

New Report Looks At The Impact Free Food At Work Has On Weight

CLEVELAND (WKRC) - A new report on eating at work says free food can really be a hidden health hazard, but there are ways to enjoy the parties without packing on the pounds.

It's hard to avoid the special snacks people bring in to work. Often they are a way to celebrate and share in something really good happening at work. It's such a kind gesture when someone at work brings in free breakfast food for the meeting or to celebrate a birthday, but a new report from nutrition specialists at the Cleveland Clinic says all those office treats are seriously expanding our waistlines.

A study on office eating was recently presented to the American Society for Nutrition. Researchers discovered people at work get an extra 1,322 calories a week, on average. Much of that appears to be from food that is less than ideal for maintaining a healthy diet and a healthy weight.

The study examined surveys of more than 5,000 working adults. It shows one in four of us get food at work -- most of it for free, which makes it hard to resist. In fact, researchers said free food accounts for more than 70 percent of all extra calories acquired at work.

As for how to deal with it, bring a healthy snack to an office event. If you want some of the other food choices, just be aware of what you're eating from the office snacks and reduce calories somewhere later in the day, if you can.

There's some thought, however, that you only have so much willpower, so you may be better off having a little bit rather than trying to avoid it and eating too much later.

Sardines Cooked With Escargot Butter Popular With Shoppers

Chef Koji Yamada has been working with the local supermarket Tsuruya in Ueda, Nagano Prefecture, to create healthy recipes for home cooking, which are distributed at all 33 stores of the supermarket in the prefecture.

Yamada, chef of Weisshorn, a restaurant located in Maruko Central Hospital in Ueda, comes up with three or four low-sodium recipes a month that feature in-season ingredients.

When Tsuruya approached him with the project, Yamada readily agreed to help, hoping to “be of use to the health and happiness of the local people.” The distribution of the recipes called “Ikiiki reshipi” (full-of-life recipes) began in the spring of 2015.

To date, the cooking procedures of around 140 dishes have been introduced on a postcard-size sheet along with the nutrient content, Yamada’s advice on cooking and comments by the nutritionists.

About 20,000 cards are printed each month, and all are said to be picked up by customers.

This month’s lineup includes such dishes as “Tomato sauce with clams and webfoot octopus cooked in a rice cooker” and “Japanese plum-flavored ice candy.”

Yamada takes the nutrition and sense of the season into consideration to create dishes that make up balanced meals.

The number of ingredients, seasonings and cooking utensils that are available for use has jumped during the past several decades. Yamada utilizes them and tries to restructure “home cooking of our time” by creating the recipes.

This week’s “sardines cooked with escargot butter” was also offered as a monthly recipe and proved popular with the shoppers. Since the sardines become steamed and roasted by the water contained in the newly harvested onion and the tomato, they turn out tender even without the use of a steam oven. The recipe also works with mackerel and horse mackerel.

Escargot butter is not butter that contains edible snails, but a kind mixed with herb vegetables that is used when cooking the escargot. The strong flavor goes well with the sardine innards.

“Have some baguette ready since it tastes delicious when soaked in the juice in the gratin dish,” says Yamada.

If you have an aversion to fish innards, remove them before cooking.

INGREDIENTS

(Serves two)

Ingredient A (100 grams salt-free butter, 10 grams anchovy paste or anchovy, 1 clove garlic, 40 grams onion, 10 grams parsley)

※This is an easy-to-make amount. (About half is used in this recipe.)

2 large sardines

1 ripe tomato

1 new onion (shin-tamanegi)

1 eggplant

40 grams mushroom

1 Tbsp breadcrumbs

METHOD

Make escargot butter by grating garlic, chopping onion and parsley. Warm butter to room temperature until soft. Mix Ingredient A well.

Remove gills and scales from sardines and rinse thoroughly. Pat dry. Sprinkle with 1/4 tsp salt.

Cut tomato and eggplant in 1-cm round slices. Slice new onion in rounds that are 7-mm thick. Cut mushrooms in half.

In a gratin dish that fits the sardines, lay vegetables and sprinkle with a bit of salt. Top with sardines and coat with half of escargot butter. Sprinkle breadcrumbs and cook in oven preheated to 200 degrees for about 20 minutes until done.

※Remaining escargot butter may be kept in the fridge or freezer and be used in many ways, such as applying on bread to be toasted or placing on mushrooms and shellfish and cooked in the oven.

“Just add weed” isn’t a recipe for good television

"Just add weed" seems to be the only idea for otherwise unrelated companies looking to capitalize on the U.S.’s growing, legal marijuana market. There are marijuana city tours, marijuana event planners, marijuana beauty products, and marijuana-friendly hotels, just to name a few, all capitalizing on the fun to be had in the new consequence-free world of cannabis consumption. Watching people consume marijuana, however, isn’t interesting in and of itself, something many friends of stoners already know. Unfortunately, that’s something Netflix hasn’t quite figured out with the release of Cooking on High, its latest cooking competition show, in which expert chefs create weed-infused dishes in the hopes of impressing their judges: unabashed stoners who are just happy to be there.

Most cooking shows are as fun to watch while high as any nature documentary or Law and Order: SVU episode. Cooking on High has all the basic ingredients (pun intended) of what could be a successful cooking competition show: affable hosts and judges, a bright, sleek set, and chefs with the ability to make eye-catching dishes.

There are distinct differences, though. The show’s resident cannabis expert Ngaio Bealum introduces a new cannabis strain each episode that will be used in the prepared dishes (though the process of turning flowers into weed oil or butter is never included, presumably for time and to save viewers from the long, boring process). After the judges consume the dishes, they are given a “THC Timeout” to allow the effects of the foods to take root, during which time they get a chance to speak directly to the camera about how high they are. (Unsurprisingly, many admit that they were already high when they arrived.)

Many of the chefs specialize in making cannabis-infused meals and other edibles. One, chef Andrea Drummer, made a French onion soup in the fourth episode that put me on the lookout for the non-medicated recipe. But with its focus on judging dishes that, for viewers, are indistinguishable from their non-medicated counterparts, Cooking on High ends up as a boring exercise in testing the limits of cannabis on TV. The success of shows like Weeds, Martha & Snoop's Potluck Dinner Party, High Maintenance, and Broad City illustrate that people are interested in shows that talk about the weed industry, incorporate celebrity weed lovers and marijuana-related popular culture, and generally comport themselves with a spacey vibe familiar to anyone who’s gotten a little too lost in the leaf. Meanwhile, Cooking on High only offers an obvious takeaway: Watching people you don’t know talk about being stoned isn’t fun for viewers, even if those viewers are themselves stoned.

The show’s creators get this, to a certain extent. The 12 episodes are no longer than 15 minutes each, and there are always only two dishes to deliberate on. The cast of rotating chefs and judges are all funny and personable enough that I didn’t completely mind giving the show a try, but for stoners and food-lovers alike, there’s not much there to earn your commitment. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the coming years, we see more and more of these Hail Mary attempts to capture the weed-consuming, TV-watching market. One day, there will be a stoner cooking show that captures our hearts.

Cook This Jowar Daliya Upma For A Nutritious Start To The Day

Looking for something wholesome and nutritious to start your day? Add a healthy twist to your breakfast with this delicious Jowar Upma cooked with lots of veggies. Gluten-free and high in protein, jowar or sorghum is a great alternative for wheat in this popular breakfast dish.

Upma may find its origins in the South Indian cuisine but it is a popular breakfast dish all across the country. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to see it as a breakfast option on one of my recent international flights too! Usually upma is made either with wheat semolina or daliya, which is commonly referred to as broken wheat.

In this recipe, instead of wheat daliya, I have used jowar daliya. While broken wheat is also healthy, jowar daliya or split sorghum is gluten free, rich in fibre and full of vitamins and minerals. With loads of veggies, this upma gives a nourishing start to the day. You can add as many or as little vegetables to the dish. Choose seasonal vegetables of your choice. This recipe is also great to hide not-so-popular vegetables, especially with picky eaters. I also added some bottle gourd in my mix.

Jowar is also a high protein grain, making it a great choice for breakfast cereals. I also use the flour to make gluten-free jowar rotis. As the awareness about gluten-free grains is increasing, more and more traditional millet crops are coming back in the market, providing us with healthier choices. Bajra, jowar, and ragi are the most popular Indian millets.

Many people think it is difficult to cook with millets but there are easy millet recipes like Veg Millet Pulao, where I use little millets instead of rice or this upma recipe, where I have substituted wheat daliya with jowar daliya.

Jowar Daliya Upma

Preparation: 10 mins | Cooking Time: 15 mins, serves two

Ingredients

1 cup — Jowar daliya (soaked for 30 mins)
1tbsp — Oil
A pinch — Asafoetida (hing)
2tsp — Mustard seeds (rai)
1 — Dried red chilli
8-10 — Curry leaves
1 — Green chilli, chopped
1 inch — Ginger, chopped
2 — Green onions, sliced
1 — Capsicum, chopped
½ cup — Bottle gourd (lauki), chopped
½ cup — Green peas, boiled
2 — Tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp — Turmeric powder
1 — Lime
Salt — To taste
Fresh coriander leaves — To garnish

Method

* Boil three cups of water in a deep pot. Drain the soaked jowar daliya and add salt to the boiling water. Mix, and let it cook on medium heat till the daliya is soft for about 10 minutes. The daliya will soak in most of the water and it will be a little wet and slushy.

* While the jowar is cooking, heat oil in a kadhai. Once the oil is hot add rai, hing, dried red chilli, and curry leaves. Sauté for a minute.

* Add the green chilli, ginger and onion. Mix well and cook for a minute.

* Next add bottle gourd, capsicum. Mix and cook for five minutes, till the vegetables start to soften.

* Add the boiled peas, tomatoes, turmeric and salt. Mix well and cook for a couple of minutes.

* Add the boiled jowar daliya and lime juice.

* Mix well and cook everything together for another minute.

* Garnish with fresh coriander and serve hot.