A Great Recipe from Rick Bayless

Rick Bayless, the famous Chicago chef who owns Topolobampo and Frontera Grill restaurants, won “Top Chef Masters” at Bravo TV.  He won thanks to his mastery of Mexican regional cooking.  The prize is $100,000, but the chef gives it to the charity Frontera Farmer Foundation to support small Midwestern farms.

Since he’s a master of Mexican regional dishes, here’s one of his greatest recipes:  Corn and Avocado Soup.  “As soon as the weather gets hot in the summer, I start craving fresh corn.  I add it to salads, vegetable dishes, eat it straight from the cob and this month, I transformed it into a delicious cold soup.  You can prepare the corn/chayote garnish and crema mixture a day ahead.  If you chill all the soup ingredients early in the day, you can blend up the soup and serve it in under 5 minutes,” says Rick Bayless.

Ingredients

2 ears fresh corn (2 cups), kernels cut from the cob

1 chayote, peeled, seeded - cut into small dice it should be about 1-1/2 cups

2 avocados for about 1 pound, peeled, pit discarded – cut it into large chunks

1 Chile Serrano

1 spring onion (white part only) quartered

Salt

1 tablespoon of finely chopped cilantro

1 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil

1/4 cup of fresh lime juice with another 1 1/2 teaspoons (you will use it for different things)

2 3/4 cups of sweet corn soup

1 1/2 cups of whole milk

1/2 cup of crema or sour cream

Instructions

Heat the oil over medium high in a large non-stick skillet.  Scoop the chayote and corn into the pan; add 1 teaspoon of salt.  Sauté until lightly brown and stir occasionally for almost 5 minutes.  Remove from the pan and refrigerate after it is cooled.  This first step can be done 1 day ahead.

In a food processor or blender add the Chile Serrano, avocado, 1/4 cup of lime juice, onion, corn soup, 1 teaspoon of salt, and milk.  Process them until smooth.  If there is too much quantity you might want to process the soup in two batches.  Then pour the soup into a pitcher or large bowl, cover and put it to fridge until chilled; it should take about 1 hour.

Stir the crema or sour cream into a small bowl, along with cilantro, 1 1/2 teaspoons of lime juice, and 1/4 of teaspoon salt.

You will cook 6 to 8 serves of Corn and Avocado Soup.  When you will serve it, pour the soup into individual bowls and top with the chayote/corn mixture, drizzling on the cilantro cream.