Cooking Around the Calendar

Today, we are still in New Orleans. At least in my heart! Down south, it’s 70 degrees, and here it’s hovering around freezing! But, we can still celebrate the taste of summer, even if we are covered with snow.

Maque Choux is a Cajun/Creole dish that features that Native American staple, corn. The first time I made it for my Yankee husband, he asked about the name. Or more accurately, he said “what does this have to do with shoes?” Bless his heart! The origin of the name is lost to the mists of time; likely it is some combination of an indigenous term, with a French Creole spin.

At it’s heart, this is a simple vegetable side dish, who’s main ingredient is corn. It usually includes bacon, garlic, onions, peppers, sometimes celery, tomatoes, or whatever else is fresh from the garden. Sometimes it is more of a creamed corn dish, sometimes a bit more like a stew. I like to put a healthy does of diced zucchini in mine; it makes the dish less of a starch bomb, without affecting the flavor profile.

You might think the dish is an offshoot of succotash, which is based on corn and lima beans, but they appear to be unrelated, except perhaps in spirit. Maque Choux has it’s roots firmly in the south U.S., while succotash is a child of the northeast U.S. The Narragansett indigenous people were the original inhabitants of Rhode Island, with a history dating back thousands of years and probably were enjoying their corn and bean dish long before the Europeans arrived. I do have to wonder if perhaps the Arcadian Cajuns passed through Rhode Island on their way to Louisiana from Nova Scotia.

Corn Maque Choux

A cajun dish using fresh summer corn.

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Course: Side Dish

Cuisine: American, Cajun, Southern

Ingredients Method

Ingredients

  

• 4 slices bacon diced
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 or 2 jalapeno peppers diced small
• 1 red bell pepper diced small
• 1/2 cup red onion dices small
• 2 small zucchini
• 3 cloves garlic minced.
• 6 ears of fresh corn removed from cobs
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 dash cayenne pepper

Method

 

1. In a large skillet, cook bacon over medium heat until nice and crisp, around 10 minutes. Remove bacon from pan, and let rest on a folded paper towel.
2. Add butter to the bacon drippings. Heat over medium until the butter is melted. Add the peppers, onions, zucchini to the hot pan. Cook, stirring occasionally, around 5 minutes. All the vegetables should be diced to approximately the same size as the corn kernels.
3. Add the garlic and corn to the vegetable mixture and cook an additional 5 minutes.
4. Add the black pepper, cayenne pepper and bacon to the pan, stir until evenly distributed. Serve warm.

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