Corn with Piquillos

Ervin Bryant was ready to move beyond buttered corn on the cob. “I really wanted to change up our corn dish,” says the chef de cuisine at Blue Collar, a modern meat-and-three in Miami. Over the course of a few years, he’d plated enough perfectly tasty but plain salt-and-peppered ears for a lifetime. “Growing up in Homestead,” he says, “I had a friend whose mother made delicious Mexican corn. I thought, let’s try that—but instead of adding spicy peppers, let’s use sweet piquillos.” By the time his corn dish made it to the menu, the dressing more closely resembled mojo sauce, the Cuban garlic-and-citrus marinade, here punctuated with minced Spanish peppers that complement the sweetness of the corn. One thing he didn’t change: butter, which makes the sauce cling to the cob like a blanket. It’s been a runaway success at work and at home. “My son loves this dish,” Bryant says. “I cut the corn off the cob for him, so he can eat the kernels
one by one.”