INdulge: It's corn time. This summery Mexican dish was the best thing I ate this week

Indianapolis Star

17 hours ago

I spent a chunk of the past week in a hospital, which, for the sake of not violating HIPAA, we'll pretend was due to a tragic State Fair funnel cake overdose (everyone's fine and no cake was involved).
One consequence is that I spent far less time than expected at the Fair, where I had planned to consume a great deal of corn, both in cob and dog form. Fortunately, I did have time for:
This time of year I think of the fairgrounds as the corn epicenter of the universe; however that designation might be equally appropriate for Tlaolli, the Near Eastside Mexican restaurant whose name literally means 'corn' in the Aztec Nahuatl language. There I enjoyed a cup of Tlaolli's street corn calabacita ($8), an especially summery take on Mexican esquites.
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Esquites — not to be confused with its cousin on the cob, elote —features cooked corn kernels tossed with a variety of ingredients, in Tloalli's case Cotija cheese, poblano pepper-infused mayonnaise and the popular chili-lime seasoning Tajín. At Tloalli the dish also receives an unconventional scattering of roasted calabacita, a small Mexican varietal of zucchini. As is the case with nearly every dish at Tlaolli, you can order your street corn vegan, with dairy-less mayo and nutritional yeast instead of Cotija.
Even with its nontraditional departures, Tlaolli's esquites hits all the crucial notes. The corn is bright and fresh, the semi-melted mayo is tangy but not gratuitously creamy, the Cotija brings a little funk and Tajín remains the one seasoning that might genuinely improve everything it touches. Meanwhile, the roasted bits of zucchini add a subtle earthy flavor without the somewhat slimy texture that can undermine squash. Still, where summer produce is concerned in this dish, the corn is the star.
Corn is, obviously, a pretty big deal around here. It's the Hoosier State's second-biggest cash crop behind soybeans, and Indiana regularly ranks among the nation's top five corn producers. At my alma mater Indiana University's home basketball games against Iowa or Nebraska, you can rely on a sizable contingent of students in the stands hoisting signs that read 'our corn is better than yours.'
Previously in INdulge: Chinese dish with surprising Hoosier ties is best thing I ate in Indy this week
I suppose Indiana has no excuse not to make good corn considering its earliest settlers practically obliterated the state so they could grow the stuff. In his 2003 book 'Corn Country: Celebrating Indiana's Favorite Crop,' author Sam Stall writes that travelers passing through Indiana occasionally remarked on the smell of smoke in the air due to settlers burning vast swaths of forest to make room for cornfields.
Those early Hoosiers desperately needed a resilient, calorie-dense foodstuff to sustain both themselves and their livestock year-round. Fortunately for them, the state's original inhabitants had been growing it for thousands of years.
Most scholarly research suggests corn was first domesticated nearly 10,000 years ago in southern Mexico's Atoyac River basin by Aztecs who began planting the seeds of a wild grain called teosinte. Teosinte migrated throughout the Americas with multiple tribes who selectively bred the plant to yield a higher nutritional value and, if you'll allow me to venture a guess, so it wouldn't taste like dirt. At some point that proto-corn became known among Native Mesoamericans as tlaolli, which some Aztecs used in the early versions of now-ubiquitous Mexican foods like tamales and tortillas.
Millennia later, sweet corn likely originated as a spontaneous mutation in dent corn — the kind you typically see growing en masse alongside the highway — that inhibited the corn's sugars from turning to starch. The first recorded sweet corn harvest was in 1779 by the Iroquois tribe in New York, a bounty that was promptly pillaged by colonial soldiers and replanted on the same land from which the natives were forcibly removed.
The history of corn is laden with similar examples of Europeans exploiting the same indigenous peoples who taught them how to survive by growing corn in the first place. The current result of that exploitation is, in a cruel twist of irony, a delicious bit of seasonal produce.
Regardless of how much you choose to confront corn's uncomfortable history, you can find excellent preparations of its kernels at Tlaollli, whose street corn calabacita combines a Mexican culinary staple with Indiana's cherished crop to yield a refreshing, concentrated dose of summer. And, as I can attest, it is way better than hospital food.
What: Street corn calabacita, $8 for 8 ounces
Where: Tlaolli, 2830 E. Washington St., [phone], tlaolli.org
In case that's not your thing: Tamales are the name of the game at Tlaolli, but you'll also find tacos and a handful of other Mexican staples reimagined to suit Hoosier preferences. Owner Carlos Hutchinson last year told IndyStar that while his food isn't quite like what you would find in his home state of Monterrey, Mexico, 'that doesn't mean that it's not Mexican.' Nearly every dish at Tlaolli has a vegan version, from jackfruit and mushroom 'birria' tacos to the NoNoNo tamales filled with soy chorizo, roasted poblanos, potatoes and black beans.